Eunice Amoaka 

English 1101 

Dr. Crowther 

03/06/2022 

Covid hit hard 

   From 2020 till now, a global pandemic happened called Covid-19 which is “A highly contagious respiratory disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. SARS-CoV-2 is thought to spread from person to person (…)” This disease touched the world and affected people in diverse ways. Below are three pictures that are going to describe what effect the pandemic had on people. First, a picture of a man where one side of his face looks normal and on the other side, he looks completely different with a mask on. Then, a picture with a paper man laying down surrounded by torn papers from a newspaper describing the pandemic. Finally, a picture of six workers sitting down in front of a factory and a text saying: “shutdown due to covid-19”. Looking at the pictures, we can see that the pandemic affected our lives physically, mentally, and economically. 

  Picture 1

  Picture 2

  Life before and after covid dramatically changed; we went from walking around freely to social distancing, from not wearing a mask to wearing a mask everywhere we go. The background of picture 1 is black on both sides. But if you look closely, there are two different shades of black on both sides. We see a man’s face. Half of his face has a mask, and the other side does not have a mask. On the side without the mask, he looks calm and healthy. He looks like a normal person without worries. But on the other half, he is wearing a mask, his face looks pale, his eyes look watery, and he looks like he is ill and sad. The brightness of the man’s face makes the left side lighter like there is a light coming out of him. On the right side, his face color is grayish like a pale color and the background is black but darker because of his face. You can see that his face color changed on both sides. The perspective here is that the man’s life has changed, and he is not the same person anymore. He might be sick, lose a loved one, lose his job. So many things might be happening to him. This picture shows Pathos as it captures the emotion of the man. This picture illustrates life before and after Covid. Each person experienced something different during that period. The argument this picture is making is that covid hit hard. Nobody was expecting something like that to happen and it took us by surprise.  Life after covid changes and affects not only our living lifestyle but also our physical. How we all have changed somehow due to covid.  The argument the picture makes is that covid changed how everything was. It is like living in a different world. Things have changed; the way people live has been turned upside down. Covid could have had a big impact on each person. Many people have lost a loved one and everyone has experienced social distancing from people, even family. 

    Each person has diverse ways to deal with a situation, but for some people covid caused deep depression. And during covid many people were depressed. The background of picture 2 is blurry. The torn papers look like they come from a newspaper. The papers are positioned in such a way that they are about to sink him. I see a paper man (it represent a person) in the middle with words surrounding him. The paper man looks depressed, and he seems numb because of his blank face. He is not smiling or crying; he has a straight face. I see different words that are a little bit blurred. They all have different meanings. The color of the background is gray. The words are mostly written in black, but there seems to be a word written in distinct colors. The paper man is yellow, and, on his feet, he has this red thing that looks like a cut. The argument this picture is making is how broken a person might be due to covid. There are multiple texts, and each has its significance and relationship with Covid. The Panic of hearing about this virus, the fear of getting it or dying from it, the news aggravating the situation by saying the number of people dying, the number of cases rising, the worry of if the situation ever going to end, wondering if the government is implicated in whatever going on, business shut down, the economy going down, people not being about to go to work due to the shutdown, they had to pay for rent, taxes, some people were struggling to even eat, questioning if taking the vaccine is a good idea or not, etc… All those words describe depression, all those words describe what a person might be going through during the pandemic. Pathos is represented here because it is about depression. Each word describes an emotion or can even make a person emotional. Even the paperman describes an emotion even though his face looks emotionless. This picture proves that covid did have a mental effect on people deep down. The paper man may represent a person who does not show his emotion or a person going through something and not knowing himself what is going on. 

    Economically, people have suffered from the shut down during covid. In the background of picture 3, you can see a grid with a word written on it. Looking inside it looks like a factory. They are six people (workers) sitting on the floor. They look sad, disappointed, discouraged. Some of them put their hands on their head, a sign of despair. They are wearing work uniforms and their hats (part of the uniform) in their hands or on the floor. The color that strikes the eyes the most in the picture is yellow. Both the hats and the uniforms are yellow. Although, they have different colors too, like one of the hats is white and two of the uniforms are orange but with some yellow on them. The text on the grid saying: “shutdown due to covid-19″ describes how many businesses, stores, were shut down leaving people without a job. This perfectly relates to the picture as the six people lost their job, they lost a way of making money for themselves and their families. How are they going to survive this crisis? So many questions. How are they going to pay their rent? How are they going to provide for themselves or their family? It is emotional to think about it, which brings pathos to the picture because the six people are just sitting down. Their faces have so many expressions so the readers can see the impact covid had on people economically. 

   Looking at the three pictures, we can see how covid has affected us in different ways; They all come together to describe each person’s life somehow during the pandemic and what damage it caused in our daily lives; negative damage not only on one aspect of our life but every domain of our life. Our lives turned around after covid; the situation has caused depression, and many people have lost their jobs due to covid losing a way of providing for their family. Will we ever go back to the way we used to be? 

For a long time, only a small percentage of Americans homeschooled. Then, with the arrival of COVID-19 in 2020 and the whole country locking down in consequence, everyone got a chance to live a similar lifestyle for a couple of months. But while normal homeschooling families certainly found the lockdown hard, regular students and their families had a far more difficult time with the changes. Homeschoolers continued in their normal life with little interruption, while the rest of the country struggled through a completely different environment without any of the familiarity of their old schedules. With the stark contrast between the semi-orderly life of homeschoolers and the crazy mayhem of families who had never had to learn this way of life, homeschoolers went from confusing, rarely encountered oddities to sought-out advisers. The pictures below show the difference between families that are used to being constantly together and families still trying to figure out how to manage the craziness.

In this classic homeschool family, five children sit peacefully around a dining room table, no parent in sight. One older sister helps a younger one with her reading. Another paints at the end of the table. Two boys sit close to us. One is looking through a microscope, while the other works in his geology textbook.  Afternoon sunlight filters through an out-of-sight window onto the wooden furniture. An open box of dominoes sits on the table between the boys, along with cups of water easily accessible all around, and a solitary black candlestick decorates the center.

The picture uses Pathos to make you feel drawn in. An urge develops to go sit with them in the silent companionship, to talk to the boys about what they’re studying, see what the older girl is drawing, sit and listen to the little girl read. It is very relatable to a homeschooler – a lazy afternoon, doing your own thing at the school table, but with everyone else.

In contrast to the peacefulness of Figure 1, Figure 2 shows a frustrated mother trying to focus in the midst of her stir-crazy children. A mess of (toys lies abandoned on the floor, given up in favor of the far more entertaining task of bothering mummy. The little boy wriggles around on the table the mother is working at, while her daughter chats companionably on the seat across from her. Morning light floods into the room from a big window filling the background, implying that this mother has a long day left ahead of her. Cleaned up and quiet, this could be a bright, cheery room. Instead, the light adds harshness to the already grating scene.

Pathos is, again, the main form of argument, but this time it gives a feeling of overwhelmingness rather than of peace. Again at a table, but this time a cacophony of unheard noise and untidiness and too bright light. Just one person trying to work now, the rest only unwanted distractions.

How did homeschoolers manage to keep their serenity in the same circumstances of spending so much time at home? Before the spring of 2020 introduced a mass lockdown, that wasn’t a relevant question. It obviously wasn’t that hard, if people chose to do it. But with the lockdown, people realized it wasn’t as easy as it looked after all, and started to seek solutions from experienced homeschoolers.

Figure 3 shows two contrasting pictures. In the top one, a group of awkward young adults is meeting conspiratorially. All wear tin-foil hats, blocking any mind-reading radio waves a government might be spying on them with. The second picture shows a father and daughter smiling at each other, both dressed as superheroes. The first picture has text reading “How homeschoolers were perceived before 2020” while the second reads “How homeschoolers are perceived now”. The pictures compare the misunderstandings and general assumptions that homeschoolers are socially incompetent, uninformed, and mostly crazy conspiracists, with the newer understanding that they are just good at a different kind of life.

A sudden change in environment took away many peoples productivity substantially. Students had to learn how to navigate online classes, work through the distractions of family around them, and adjust to having their whole rhythm messed up. Homeschoolers, on the other hand, while still struggling, had all of the materials they needed at hand, could continue to use the same schedule as before, and were used to working in the surroundings of their home. They had far less to adjust to, and were able to give pointers to the uninitiated, some of whom, as they managed to adjust, discovered that there were benefits to the different way of learning/working. Parents trying to work with little children in the house weren’t going to enjoy the experience, but maybe some discovered that they would rather be a full time parent with no distracting work, or just that a more flexible schedule was very convenient. Some parents discovered their children worked better in a different environment. Many people realized that if the craziness of being cooped up at home had the edge taken off, it was relaxing to not be rushing around.

 

Works Cited

Hess Un-Academy  How homeschoolers were perceived before 2020 vs how homeschoolers are perceived now 

https://hessunacademy.com/homeschool-quotes/ 

Accessed February 28

 

Homeschool Legal Defense  “The Romeike family studies around a table at home.” Association.https://www.wired.it/play/cultura/2017/02/28/lhomeschooling-istruzione-domiciliare-scuola/

Accessed February 28

 

Kohei_Hara

https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/parents-of-school-age-kids-during-covid-19-yes-you-re-stressed 

Accessed February 28

 

 

 

Zachary Boykins     

ENGLISH

2/22/2022

Ms. Crowther

1^st – Servers

• When the COVID-19 lockdown started it had affected so many jobs around the world.

This virus kept over 114 million people out of work. During the tough times a lot of

people struggled to even find new jobs because everything was closing due to a severe

illness around the world. There were a lot of people getting sick and just a very sad time for the hard workers. Restaurants around the world we’re closing and there was a

tough time for servers to get paid. Being a server was a job required for people to have face-to-face contact with each

other and because there was a virus those protocols were prohibited due to a shut

down.   When the restaurants were closing down people who were working as that server

lost their jobs and was struggling to find another hobby or workplace. As the months

went by, restaurants started to open but only for delivery services only. Servers still had

a hard time trying to find a job because the hours of operation at the restaurant we’re

only for a limited time which is a huge effect. In the aftermath, restaurants opened back up for a limited capacity of people. Servers still wasn’t making the right amount as usual. In the aftermath, servers were required to wear masks while working in order to not get sick. This picture shows a woman who’s in work-mode on duty working.

Security- 

Being a security guard is not a easy job. You have to watch people before they make a mistake, you have to control crowds, and you have to hear the mouth of someone else often. Before there was a lockdown

Events we’re opening all around the world for the city of Atlanta. The Mercedes been stadium is where I work and I had just got a job there October 2019, five months later there was a serious illness breaching to the United States. We had to go in lockdown and it affected me and other people who worked as a security guard. It also affected the events that were supposed to be taking place for the Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Most of the people at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium who works there were impacted heavily and it was very sad because a lot of those workers were very elderly ages range from 19-70. Most of the age range were 50-70. They were impacted The words because that was their only job and it got took away because of the pandemic. As the months went by we can do anything about work because riots and crowds were taking over Atlanta while there was a serious illness. Next, around July happened and Arthur Blank gave out a $1 million fund for workers at the stadium. So we had something coming in every month but it was not enough to support the family. In the aftermath, when August 20 20 started did stadium begin to open back up for football season but the protocols were very different. I did not know how we were going to go back to work during an illness. So I briefly read the rules on when coming back to work. The rules were very different than normal, we had to wear masks, we had to monitor people very differently by doing it with technology and we had to use hand sanitizer more often. I did not know how this was going to work but the minute I went back to work. Everything went very strictly well.

• Doctors & healthcare workers-?

on the other hand,  despite this illness taking out servers and event securities out of work. There was one job that was still required to work every day during the lockdown. Before the crisis, there were healthcare workers who did their jobs with not much precaution but when every other stores and businesses close down temporarily, hospitals and doctors were still required to work. They had to handle their job with the lot of protection. Doctors were required to wear protective shoe wear, mask wear, clothing wear and headwear. This was huge so they had to protect their self while working. People who were working had to be very careful about going out every single day while there was a serious disease going around the world. This was very concerning because every day was a hard day for them. Workers that worked in hospitals had to wake up every day and have a lot of shenanigans going on at their jobs. When I mean shenanigans they had to deal with people dying, a lot of victims from this disease in the hospital, and it was a very busy day every day. After business is started opening up, the workers still have to wear masks and protective wear to keep from getting this disease because even though things slow down and businesses opened up, the business in the health industry continue to be the same. This argument is Stated how workers process through a global shut down.

 

     Over the past years since the start of the pandemic, life, for me, was mundane and a pleasant change of environment. What I worried and to this day worry about the most is how well I’m doing in school. Trying to find a perfect schedule to work around my job was hard but I managed. Though I’m now yet again behind on my assignments. I usually rush into things without knowing what I’m supposed to do, and in doing so, I just mess things up. I worry about my future a lot, I’m 20 years old and I still have no idea what it is I want to do. Just thinking about what I should do once I’m done with school is really stressing me out. I’m also extremely frustrated at the fact that I’m a lazy bum, it’s hard to change that habit. I tried to fix that habit of being lazy but it’s so difficult. 

     Honestly, a few lessons I learned from this time period is to use most of my free time to do what I enjoy doing, like hanging out with friends and playing games with them. Otherwise, I will just be back to being a mess of stress. I also learned how to adequately manage my time, but I still need to work on that. What I will do differently now would be to get better at time management. I struggle when it comes to managing my time, and that is extremely detrimental to my education. What I also learned from this period of time is that while managing my time, taking things slowly will relieve my stresses. 

Hi, my name is Pau Khai. I preferred to be called Khai (Kai), but you can also call me Pau (Paw/Pow either one.) My hobbies are similar to your average guys; I love video games. My love for video games has put me on a path to computer science because I want to make my games. Unfortunately, computer science is extremely tedious if you’re someone like me who gets bored quickly. So I combat this boredom through music called LoFi (Low Fy).

I don’t know if I need to explain what LoFi is, but I will explain it to the best of my ability. LoFi is a collection of music with all of them having the same goal, to mellow the audience. My current favorite collection of LoFi is from a YouTube channel called “Riot Games Music” titled “Sessions: Diana | A Creator-Safe Collection | Riot Games Music.” At the moment, I don’t have any favorite movies or shows, or sports to talk about. 

I know it’s incredibly late for me not to have made up my mind yet, but I don’t know what I should do for my future goal. I’m not skilled or have adequate knowledge of anything, so that’s also what’s weighing on what I should do. Once I finish college, I will trickle into society and get a job; from there on out, I guess I’ll see what happens.

     I really can’t recall much of what happened back then. I was one of the lucky ones as I didn’t have any relatives that had died from Covid. I was, however, worried for my families and friends though. This is not as hard as it is to talk about but I guess since I still remember it, deep inside I was traumatized. I saw my grandma’s lifeless body back in my country when I was about 6 years old. While recalling this memory doesn’t have such a deep impact now, I was probably traumatized and I had never realized it. What I’m getting at is that I would hate to experience a death of a loved one so soon.

     What comforted me through the pandemic in 2020, was my friends and family. Since none of my friends were affected nor were any of my family and their families, we could still hang out. We would hike Stone Mountain almost every week, it was refreshing. There was barely anyone most of the time and that was also nice. I can’t specifically say a show or movie I watched during those times. I watch a lot of movies and shows during the summer. There were no specific genres I like either but I guess I could say I binged watch a lot of cartoons and animated films. I also played a lot of games with one of my friends (he was the only one that had a computer). We would constantly play this game called “League of Legends,” and it was fun.

Dr. C, I thought I had already posted my Blog#1,3,4 but it seems it didn’t get posted in this specific site, my apologies.

Aloany Singh  

February 15,2022 

English  

Dr. Crowther  

Visual Rhetorical  

All animals should be respected, just like humans. Most of us have pets and think of them as part of the family. We couldn’t imagine someone harming or hurting them or even trying to. We defend our pets like they’re our family. Many pets are abused or oppressed; every day. Many, even kids, mistreat pets, harm and abuse pets, and some people respect their pets and other pets. have you ever seen those commercials where animals and pets have been mistreated and are looking for new families to rescue them? Those commercials are the saddest to see and see somebody miss treat something God created like you and me. We want to be treated right with care and respect and pets. They deserve to be loved and cared for like humans. They should be treated with respect also. My first impression of the visual rhetorical I picked is the well know rapper named Waka Flocka Flame. He is known for his loud and rebellious rap music. He is an African American male with tattoos holding a rescued dog Daphna who looks like she has been mistreated and abandoned. They are positioned right to the words. I see the design of the grey background with a darker shade of grey and red words. he is making eye contact, and the dog is as well. 

I peep PETA in red which stands for People For The Ethical Treatment Of Animals. I see waka warns cowards to “pick on somebody your size because it says, “Only Cowards Abuse Animals. It also says on the red part in the image with light white words and one bold white word: “To dogs and cats, people are often the biggest bullies.” the one bold white word is people. In the dark grey, it says, “please always speak up if you see or suspect cruelty to animals, including chaining fighting or abuse of any kind. Their lives may depend on it.” It feels like it is arguing and aiming to stop chaining, fighting, and other abuse of dogs and other animals. The image’s argumentative strategy is ethos because they are using someone who will convince the audience, somebody trustworthy, knowledgeable, and well-meaning. It is also pathos because it brings emotions. It may be logos because it gives reasoning and figures about people bulling animals. 

Treat animals with kindness. It could be a problem with them using an African American holding a dog. Telling people only cowards abuse animals. Many whites care for the pets like family, you know, like feed them human food ride around with them in their car people take the dogs o doggy dates get them groomed and African American people do that as well. Still, many African Americans treat pets like wildlife animals. They give them water and dog food they them. Chained up in the backyard, barely give them baths. They don’t even take their pets to the vet to get checked; even some just let their pets die. So them using a black male who is known for his rebellious rap music and is on a very popular reality show in Atlanta could be seen as problematic considering what I just said about how many Africans treat pets and animals. 

Hi, my name is Aloany Singh. In this discussion, I will be explaining my first essay of the semester, the structures I used to piece my essay together, and the strategies I used to complete my final draft. So, I started by reading the prompt and the rubric. I then began brainstorming, and I used a diagram. I also used prewriting drafting as a strategy. I used bullet point notes, keywords, and outlines. I used chronology order, organization mind mapping, and looping. After gathering all the details, I wanted to include them in my essay. I begin with the purpose of writing the essay.
Then I began to gather my audience’s attention by introducing myself. I started by talking about the current chapter in my life and my career pathway plan. I was glad to engage and tell my side of the story relating to the pandemic and how it felt living in the moment from my perspective and experience. I can say pretty much everything went well; from brainstorming to outlining to prewriting my rough draft to writing my final essay, it all went well. The strength of the paper is I used very descriptive details when I was writing. I put everything together in the end by just using a few transition words and adding some words to make everything make sense to the readers. It wasn’t difficult for me. My instructor went over the instructions well, and in every detail, she gave us a rubric to follow and so many more helpful tools and strategies to write the essay. I struggled with closing my sentences and writing them clearly for readers to read and understand. my weakness of the paper was that I had to rephrase some things, find a stopping point, and include punctuation. I would use all these strategies in the future; brainstorming, outlining, prewriting the rough drafting was my favorite strategy. I used New York Times resource to get data. Next time, I will find a closing point in my sentences and write my sentences clearer for the readers to read and understand.

rough

Even though the pandemic started off rough, things gradually got better. To be honest I thought that the pandemic was going to last longer. To this day 2.32 million people have gotten sick from this tragic event. Now there are vaccines and treatments in place for the virus symptoms. Everything right now is starting to get back to normal. People are roaming the street again. Business and schools are opening back up. We still have to wear masks but the world is starting to look like its old self. Although things were getting better, bad things started to evolve. Asians are getting blamed for the spread of the virus. They are being harassed and attacked because rumors spread that it’s true. There are more than “9000” incidents that have been reported of people being “Anti-Asian.” Since the coronavirus was first started in China, families of Asian and Pacific Islander descent have been treated as “scapegoats” just because of their race. Things were starting to get so bad that there were starting campaigns, bystander training sessions, and public rallies. Even the president got involved. President Joe Biden signed the bipartisan COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act. Incidents like this, including the pandemic, are what really bring people together. Families that haven’t spoken to each other, have now got the urge to speak. There are multiple lessons that have been learned in this pandemic. One thing that I learned is that we all depend on each other. We’re all in this together, whether we like it or not, and our success or failure is dependent on everyone doing their part. I hope we never forget how much we rely on supermarket cashiers, truck drivers, manufacturing workers, public-sector workers, teachers, and one another. We all suffer if one component of the system fails. It is critical that we all work together for the greater good. Also to do what you want to do now. You never know how long you will have to do what you want. If you want to do something don’t wait.