Teenager\'s Guide to the Real

¶ … Teenager's Guide to the Real World," written by Marshall Brain. The chapter in case is entitled Relationships Are Random (Brain, 1997).

The purpose of this chapter consists in bringing some light in the confusing mind of the teenager in matters of relationships and related aspects. The author aims at identifying matters of high interest for teenagers, or most important questions that teenagers ask themselves when not being able to resolve a situation regarding dating at this age.

The author starts by mentioning that relationships are difficult no matter the age of the people involved, they are considered to be maddening and to make no sense foe teenagers as they do for adults, also. This is probably meant to relax the mind of the teenage reader, and to clear his mind of previous judgments that might cloud his vision.

The author continues by identifying some of the questions that teenagers ask themselves or their friends when dealing with dating problems. In the author's vision, these questions include: why do boys or girls dislike me? Why do I feel so awkward around girls or boys? Why do boys or girls behave so weird?

One of the most important facts noticed about this article consists in the fact that the author addresses both teenage boys and girls at the same time, in the exact same manner, making it clear from the beginning that the same issues, their explanations, and their solutions apply to both categories.

One of the central arguments of the article states that in the case of teenagers relationships are completely random. In other words, there are no reasons for which teenagers' relationships take place or not. The author advises his readers to accept this situation in order to better understand the issues that concern relationships.

Other matters of interest in the article are represented by the comparisons and parallels made by the author in order to exemplify and explain some of the situations regarding dating in the case of teenagers.

For example, the author compares the situation consisting in asking girls out and being rejected by them with ordering lunch in a restaurant, making a decision about what dishes to eat, and what dishes to refuse in that situation. The authors thinks that refusing to order certain items in the menu is the same as being rejected by the girls asked to go out by the boy in case.

There is no personal reason for which one does not order certain items from the menu, same as there are not personal reasons for certain girls to reject certain boys that ask them out. The author wants to express the fact that in both cases the reasons are completely random. There is nothing personal and the teenagers in case should not worry about the situation, trying to find some sort of explanation and solution for further situations that might take place in the same manner.

The author further compares the activity of asking people out with selling cars. In other words, each activity is a numbers game. The author explains that, like in selling cars, a person must ask many people out and be rejected until someone will answer positively to their request. This is why this is considered to be a numbers game.

In order to further enlighten the minds of teenagers reading this article, the author advices the readers to follow his directions in order to realize the odds of receiving positive answers when asking someone out.

However, the author also offers several solutions that might improve teenagers' success at getting dates. For example, just like in selling cars, there are certain techniques that teenagers can practice in order to increase their success. The most important thing is to not take rejection personally, since the author observes that the reasons behind the rejection in case are not personal, they are random and should be treated like that.

Experience, which translates into practice, is also expected to increase success. The more a person practices this, the easier it will get. Having strong people skills also helps. Being confident is another advice offered by the author.

The author continues by approaching other issues of interest regarding dating for teenagers. He identifies situations that apply to most teenagers, explains them, and provides solutions for these situations.

In my opinion, the article is very successful at approaching a very wide range of situations that most teenagers are interested in. The article clearly identifies issues that concern the targeted audience, the teenagers. These issues are carefully explained and are easy to understand by the readers, given the clever comparisons made by the author in order to be better understood.

The author succeeds at giving useful advice to his readers regarding the issue of dating for teenagers. Readers will probably find this article very useful at making certain aspects more clear for them.

2. Coping with old age

The issue of old age and how to cope with it concerns a great number of people, some of them being quite young actually, but worrying about old age. This increased interest for the subject explains the number of articles that address the issue of old age and other related aspects.

Such an article was created by the writers of a website specialized in providing all kinds of support for senior citizens, covering all categories of seniors and their most important problems. The article is entitled Coping With Old Age (Seniors Site, 1996).

The article was written by a senior, analyzing things from his perspective based on personal experience and on the experience of other people he met. The writer aims at providing an overview of old age, what means, how it looks like, how it feels like, what problems, but also what benefits come with old age.

The article is clearly divided into several sections. Each section has a subtitle and it addresses a specific subject related to coping with old age. The article starts with a brief introduction that is intended to make the reader more comfortable. In order to determine the reader to empathize with him, the writer starts the article by retelling in short an event that he participated to and that made him realize his age and what it meant for him and the others.

The article continues with a description of the signs of old age that affect most people reaching this stage of their lives. As the author describes, these signs include: hard breathing over little exercise, slight trembling of the hands, certain little twitches, flabby muscles, several aches and pains, numerous visits to the doctor, wrinkles, gray hair, problems with the short-term memory, overall weakness, changing eating and sleeping habits, decreased interest in sex, and others.

It is very important that the author starts be listing these signs of old age. This is because these signs affect most of the senior people, they must know how to recognize them, they must be aware of them and their meaning.

The author continues by presenting the psychological approach most people have on old age. This is a very important aspect that the author successfully approaches. For example, the author describes the various ways in which some seniors deal with, or do not deal with old age. Some of them hide their age, others recur to cosmetic procedures intended to improve their looks and to make them look younger, in the attempt to trick themselves and others about their real age.

Another important aspect related to old age and discussed in the article refers to retiring from the job. Some people want to ignore old age, as the author states, by refusing to retire from the job they served for decades. The job is an important part of one's life, something that one relates to everyday, which makes it very difficult to retire.

But the author advices that retiring from the job does not necessarily equals retiring from any kind of activity. There are several activities that most senior citizens can choose from.

As mentioned above, the article is divided into sections that refer to taking care of the body, taking care of the mental side, and maintaining a solid spiritual life. Each section provides a series of advice that is intended to help the readers that are concerned by the subject in coping with all the aspects of old age.

The section that refers to the physical body and to taking care of it includes advice like: maintaining cleanliness as much as possible, even with help from others, exercising regularly and moderately, dieting, eliminating bad habits. The section also provides advice on how to deal with sickness and disease, and it also provides suitable advice regarding nutrition.

The article continues with the section referring to mental health. The author advices the readers to pay great attention to this subject and other related issues, because of the medical implications it has.

The author further provides important advice, like: doing useful work that can help seniors have fun and to even earn some money, traveling, writing letters to relative and friends and communicating with them more often, maintaining hobbies, reading good books, engaging in all types of group activities, playing games and sports, monitoring daily attitudes, and others.

This section is followed by another, referring to the spiritual life. The author also provides advice in this area, in order to help seniors with certain aspects.

The article is quite easy to be understood by anyone, it is written from a personal perspective and experience, backed by the psychological professional formation of the author. The author divides the article into clear sections, each of them addressing a specific subject of high importance.

The article successfully manages to clarify certain aspects that usually raise questions from seniors or from other age categories. The advice provided by the author is very pertinent and it covers a wide range of issues.

3. Life without television

Television is an important part of most people's lives. Its benefits have become so obvious and so important that a series of studies and analyses have been performed in order to establish the power and the influence of television on its viewers.

The subject determined a series of periodicals and specialized websites to develop articles in the field. Such an article was presented on the Live Science website, was written by Clara Moskowitz and is entitled "Out There: People Who Live without TV."

The article mainly aims at describing the findings of several surveys and studies regarding people who do not watch television (Moskowitz, 2008). The author makes it very clear from the beginning of the article that for some people television has become as important as food, or shelter, or the Internet is.

As the article states, 1-2% of Americans do not watch television, and they are sometimes considered strange by the others, who watch it. As mentioned above, the article is very successful at presenting the findings of several studies and surveys.

Such a study focused on determining what types of people would choose to stop watching TV. About two thirds of the interviewed people were either very liberal or very conservative. As the author explains, this is probably because, even if their views on life in general are quite opposite, the disadvantages of television are consented upon by both groups, which determines them to act alike when it comes to watching TV.

The article continues with several sections, each of them trying to explain certain issues related to the subject. One of these sections focuses on explaining the reasons for which some people decide to stop watching TV. As mentioned above, all the findings, facts, and explanations presented in the article are provided by scientists and have been collected through developing several studies and surveys.

One of these scientists has discovered three distinct categories of reasons for which people do not watch TV. For example, some of these people consider that television is responsible for presenting excessive sex, violence, and consumerism, and would rather protect their families by not exposing them to such threats.

Other people who stop watching television consider the TV takes a lot of space and time in their lives, it intrudes too much and it significantly affects their relationship with other people, or with other activities they might be interested in. They consider that television interferes with conversations or with time spent with their families, and they choose to stop this annoying habit.