Gladwell uses the Broken Window Theory to explain what really causes crime. The criminologists who developed this theory argue that "crime is the inevitable result of disorder. If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broken, and the sense of anarchy will spread from the building to the street on which it faces, sending a signal that anything goes (141). The broken window theory supports the notion of how the environment people are in affects their actions.

I believe the broken window theory explains the cause of many of the crime epidemics today. It is just another way of saying people are shaped by their environment. I know I personally act different based on my environment. My use of language is significantly different when I am talking to a friend or peer than it would be if I were talking to an adult or person of higher authority. The environment sets a precedent for people to follow. If a window remains broken and is not fixed, people will notice it and feel that this kind of behavior is accepted. Soon one thing leads to another, until people are robbing each other and committing serious crimes.

I believe one of the best ways to fight crime is by improving the environment. There is a reason cities pay grant money for companies that are willing to renovate old abandoned buildings, or pay developers to redevelop old land. These areas, if kept the way they are, will experience a dramatic increase in crime based on the conditions of the area. We should continue to fight crime by taking this idea of the broken windows theory to improve our neighborhoods and cities. Currently the issue is that crime is already out there, and law enforcement agencies are probably putting more time toward prosecuting the existing criminals than they are putting toward improving the environment to reduce the number of criminals. They need to shift their focus from physically restraining criminals to changing the way these criminals would think psychologically. It is always better to prevent crime than it is to punish it.

Posted in 0 comments Posted by Umang Patel at 11:37 PM  

School rampages are becoming all too common these days. The nation was in shock when we first heard of the devastating Columbine shootings. Another shooting came closer to home, at Case Western Reserve University. Last year the Virginia Tech massacre took dozens of lives, and most recently the shootings at Northern Illinois University have put students in shock once again. School is supposed to be a safe place to learn and explore. This world seems to be getting more and more dangerous, where even a school building is no longer safe. We need to find a way to somehow end this trend of killing sprees and bring back the notion of safety in our schools.

The first step in preventing deadly attacks and rampages is to identify what triggers them. Psychologists and sociologists make a career out of this task, and yet they have failed to prevent such acts from happening. Almost all of these shooters have some sort of mental condition or illness that allows them to act in such an irresponsible manner without feeling guilty of it. They stereotypical school shooter is a loner who is depressed and has been locking in their feelings and allowing them to accumulate, until they reach an intensity where they become deadly. They are usually insecure and don't communicate well. Although this may be the stereotypical "loner" kid, sometimes the killer is not easy to identify. The NIU shooter was a perfectly normal kid, and nobody suspected that he would do such a thing. He did not have a record of any previous violations with the school or the law. He maintained good grades and received his degrees. Although the signs leading up to the killing spree weren't obvious, they were there.

Some days you learn things about your friends that reveal a shocking truth, a hidden secret about them, that you would never have guessed to be true. Today was one of those days for me. I have a friend who is incredibly smart. He learned to read at the age of three and knew calculus before entering high school. This kid really is a true genius, because not only is he book smart, but he has the ability to use his existing knowledge to develop new, innovative ideas. He is a true entrepreneur, exactly the kind of person I would want to hang around.

Today he told me a brief history of his dark past. He was always hated for being so smart, or for not fitting in. His parents were oppressive, and his teachers were offended because in some cases he would outsmart them. He had severe depression for most of his life, and has attempted to commit suicide more than just a few times. I was shocked to hear this, and the tone in his voice indicated that this was no joke or exaggeration. I would never have expected such a smart and successful student to even think of such a thing, just as most people say that they would've never expected the person to commit such ludicrous acts in regards to the school shootings. Although my friend doesn't have vested anger against people at school, my point is that it is extremely important for us to connect with the people around us and learn more about them so we can prevent any tragic events from happening. The kids that execute most school shootings seem to be perfectly normal people that don't have any outstanding problems with school, so it is hard to pick up on the signs of the attack.

Since it is hard to identify the troubled people in our society, I believe the only way to solve the problem of school shootings is to treat all the students on campus with respect. It is important to maintain communication will all kids, including quiet reserved kids, so signs of suspicious behavior can be recognized quickly, because these kids' actions are often overlooked. Building a tight-knit community would help improve the environment and surroundings, supporting Gladwell's Broken Window Theory. Most of these shooters have been somehow affected by their environment, especially their relationships with other students and acquaintances.

Posted in 0 comments Posted by Umang Patel at 12:20 AM  

I am enjoying this new blogging class and I think it is a very practical, innovative way to teach a class. Having class online is convenient and it helps us learn to better communicate in this technology driven age. The days of writing letters and flipping through pages and pages to find information are gone. Now a simple click online can pull up all the information you need, and with another click you can share that information with virtually anyone. I really like the way many things are done currently in this class. I also have a few suggestions for what we could do differently in the future.

Reading and Reflection

I understand that this class is for an English II credit, so there must be both reading and writing. I enjoy The Tipping Point and don't mind writing about it. I think we should continue doing what we've been doing with the reading and reflection posts. The problem with these posts is that it usually says there should be two posts, but all the criteria we are supposed to cover for the post is all related. I usually spend more time trying to figure out how to separate my ideas into two posts than I do for actually writing the posts. I believe it would work better if there were two different prompts for the two posts, or if they were combined into one long post.

Observation and Commentary

I think the OC posts are the most fun to write about, because they're really more about your own opinion. The assignments should be kept as-is. Everything seems to work alright.

Research and Linking

Let's just put it this way: I don't like looking for other people's blogs about subjects I'm not passionate about, reading and commenting them, then never returning to them again. I do believe there is value in doing so, since you can read and analyze the style and bias of other writers, learn from their ideas, and view multiple viewpoints on similar issues. However, I would prefer doing assignments that are not necessary related to blogs, such as the last assignment about researching and linking to the other alternative schools. This way students can still learn to use their resources to find information on the internet, extract important information from it, and form their own opinion about their findings.

Commenting and Posts

As many people have already mentioned, I would like to see more interaction. This could mean more commenting and less posts. The only issue I could see is that there are always going to be people that take the easy way out. They leave short comments like "I agree," that lack insight and show no evidence of critical thinking. I also feel that students are required to write a lot, since five posts are required every week. To get an idea of how much we have to write, I copied and pasted my last five posts into MS Word and removed all titles and spaces, and the end result was 11 pages of posts, double spaced at 12 pt. Times New Roman font. The only reason I go into that much depth in explaining this is to show how much we are writing each week. I understand that it may not be the best solution to reduce the number of posts required each week because there are always people that are going to take the easy way out and write short, unorganized posts that show no insight. However, I would rather write a few detailed thought-out posts than write a lot of short posts (Quality over quantity). The one good thing about writing so much is that I have learned to organize my ideas and write them quicker, because I'm the type of person that takes a long time to plan what I write before I even start writing. Now I am forced to get my ideas out quickly and make them concise, which proves to be a valuable skill when you get into the business world, where productivity is essential.

Future Reference

I would suggest that if you decide to do the blogging class again in the future, there should be some sort of way all the students can see each other's posts in one central location. This could be done easily through RSS feeds. Using a platform other than Blogger could allow more versatility. Platforms like WordPress would enable you to completely customize the blogging system and even allow you to submit all the students' grades online, so each individual can view their own grades.

Posted in 1 comments Posted by Umang Patel at 1:05 AM  

With the second semester kicking in strong, I have experienced an increase in the workload both at school and outside of school. One of my goals this year has been to learn how to manage time and work efficiently. I have tried many new things to achieve my goal, but the fact of the matter is that until I don’t sit down and analyze what I’ve been doing, what works and what doesn’t, I am not going to learn anything new. This is one thing I have learned from the interim experience at Linworth Alternative High School. Every year the students get a week off from school to do anything that interests them. The only requirement is to complete the 40 hours required and write journal entries to reflect on what was done and what you learned.

My mother always tells me that Mohandas Gandhi used to say that people think most clearly in the early hours of morning, and that following a routine is necessary to living a successful life. I have taken up my mom’s advice and followed Gandhi’s words this year. I am fortunate enough that my dad drops me off to school every morning, so I don’t have to wait for the bus. In previous years, I have reached school only a few minutes prior to class, taking advantage of every extra minute of sleep I have in the morning. This year, however, I have made it a point to get up every morning at 6 am, and be at school by 7:10 am, whether I needed to be there or not. I am not exactly sure what the psychology is behind this, but I have been wider-awake during class this year than last year, even if I have gotten less sleep. I have also maintained a routine during the weekends and resisted the temptation of sleeping-in until late, which has helped me keep a uniform sleep cycle during the weekdays.

The first thing I hear with any time-management plan is to set goals and establish priorities. I have always heard this, and thought I was following exactly what the experts say. I was setting goals and establishing priorities… in my mind that is. Until now, I have not realized the importance of putting your goals and priorities down on paper. I have found legal pads extremely useful, since they are perfect for maintaining lists of things to do. I break each task down into little chunks and cross off each thing I accomplish, which enables me to see marked progress.

Until now, I have overlooked the importance of organizing your communications as well. It is important to set aside only a limited time for phone calls, emails and things of that nature. With two of my own businesses, it is hard to resist the temptation of constantly taking calls or answering emails to provide “good service.” I have learned to set my own business hours in which to work on business related tasks. My email responses have become shorter, more concise and to the point. I have also setup an online customer relationship management system so I can assign most of the work to other people to complete. Currently I forward most of my calls to my brother and cousin, who are in Boston and New York respectively. They take calls whenever I am not available. I am still working on creating a protocol to follow so I can outsource most of my repetitive, labor oriented “secretary work” at rates as low as $2/hr.

The only issue I am running into now is that I am putting high priority on important tasks, but there seems to be an endless list of “high priority” items on my to-do list. I never seem to get to the low priority items. For example, I would put a higher priority on homework due the next day than I would on a large project due in a week. This leads to procrastination, because the priority of that project does not go up until the last few days before it is due. I also need to continue working on getting more sleep, because generally people work more efficiently when they are well rested.

Posted in 0 comments Posted by Umang Patel at 12:52 AM  

After reading Gladwell's chapter 3 of The Tipping Point, the only thing on my mind was, "I want to make things stick too!" I've spent years trying to learn what makes things stick for people. One project I've worked on recently, promoting my annual new year's eve party, involved making things sticky.

Midnight Masala 2008 - Ohio's largest Indian new year's event

For the past three years I've been hosting a public new year's event called Midnight Masala, which features south Asian entertainment. The first year, I held the dinner and dance at a decent hotel ballroom, rented sound and lighting equipment and paid the hotel to take care of the dinner. The promotions for the event were very basic, with word-of-mouth advertising by telling friends, and a few posters around the Indian venues throughout Columbus. The event was sold out, with about 155 people, yet I didn't manage to make any profit that year. I was unhappy with the service from the hotel, and the event didn't seem to extravagant. The next year, our event budget quadrupled as I went all out. I spent over $10,000 for the next year's party, and admission was $50 per person with dinner and $25 without dinner. The product was far better than the year before, yet I did not get the turnout I was expecting, and ended up losing quite a bit of money. One thing I realized was that most of the people came for the party later in the night. This was something I took into consideration as I developed the plan for the next year's event. I figured out that people really want a good party, and there needs to be some way for me to get the message across that the party I'm throwing is something they need to come to. They don't really care about the food.

This past year I brought the party to an urban setting, at a venue in South Campus Gateway on the OSU campus. This year's event was the most successful because I did my research to figure out how people would react to the promotions, and how to make the message stick that Midnight Masala 2008 was the place to be, and they needed to get tickets. When I started promoting the event I had three goals:

1. Spread the word - People should know about the event AND tell others about it
   
2. Convince them it's the best - Get people to believe the event is the best place to be on new year's eve
3. Get them to buy tickets

Posted in 0 comments Posted by Umang Patel at 1:41 PM