I would like to have you people here read this introduction to my essay on Sars. I know that I exagerrate at some parts, well at quite a few parts, but besides that, could you please tell me what you think about this intro to my essay. Thank you very much!
Sars, Sars, Sars. We have all heard a lot about severe acute respiratory syndrome whether or not we have been listening to the news everyday or reading the newspaper constantly. I was asked to find out what Sars is exactly and to discuss its impact on the world, the province of Ontario, and more specifically Toronto. Now, I started researching Sars, and after all my research, I was able to list symptoms of Sars off the top of my head, I was able to tell you where the virus originated from, I could tell you what percentage of the reported cases of Sars died, I was able to tell you the death tolls from Sars in numerous countries. I knew that it was a virus most likely from the Corona virus family and I knew what Sars looked like under a microscope. My research was very thorough indeed, but there was something missing, something I couldn’t quite place my finger on. I looked up a definition of Sars and I got back that Sars was a respiratory illness of unknown causes. That seems like a fit definition of Sars, but still there was something missing. Suddenly it hit me like a wall of bricks, I knew what was missing, it was personal experience of the virus, and personal opinions of people I knew in the world around me. So some of my research for this essay was done from a most unlikely source – a badminton forum. There was a discussion at my badminton forum about Sars, and people from all over the world who only knew each other through their love of badminton learned so much about each other in that time. There was talks about fear of getting the virus, fear of loved ones getting the virus, already having the virus and feeling very confused and helpless. In that while that this discussion was going on, people all over the world were connected by something that most are feared of. I made the further realization that the secret to understanding something, anything, even if it is a virus, is personal experience. You cannot learn all about something by what some scientist in Toronto says or by what someone sitting on the World Health Organization says, granted you can learn things about a virus from them, but you cannot really understand it until you experience it. This lead me to a further realization, it’s not about understanding where the virus come from, or who had it first, it is about understanding everyone else on the world, it is about understanding that while everyone is different, and while race, religion, age, *** and beliefs may separate us, we are all the same in some forms. We all have the same fears, the same worries, the same hopes, the same disappointments, the same fragile life that can be majorly affected by something, whether that something be meinsecule or whether that would be something epidemic. In essence, we are all alike, and I think that that is the most valuable thing that this whole issue of Sars could have taught us, that everywhere on this world, we are individuals, yet we are one the same. I had to have anyone who reads my essay to understand where I am coming from, so now that this is out of the way – enjoy!
It's pretty good. Just wondering, is this a presentation/speech, a reseach paper or a "formal prose essay"?
BF gives out information on SARS! Nicely written introduction. If that's the introduction, then what is the rest of the essay going to be like? Maybe the subject of a thesis! Spelling of "miniscule" There's other viruses about in USA so I hope BFer's are taking adequate precautions against prairie dogs.
If we substitute the word "SARS" for "monkeypox", will things like baseball/basketball games be postponed? Sorry, that's me going off topic!
You might want to double check the grammar. There were a few sentence fragments, and run on sentences. I've probably written about 5000 pages of essays so far, and my only advice is to skip the intro altogether and write the main stuff first. Finnish the conclusion before writing the intro. Then re-write the body and conclusion again. Seems like a waste of time but it's faster this way.
Here's something on fear! Admittedly, my personal experience of SARS was fear during the very bad stages in early April 2003. Fear of what? Fear of dying? No, in fact not. SARS affects children to a much lesser extent than adults. So my fear was wether if I contract the illness, who would look after my baby? If I die, what would happen to her? I, myself am not afraid of dying. Everybody has to die sometime. I've seen death many times, wether it is predictable or unpredicted. It is not pleasant but a reality of life. Many people were afraid. SARS is a totally new entity. We were groping in the dark in the inital stages. Many people I had worked with in the first affected hospital were collegues of mine. Never in my wildest dreams could I have expected a contagious disease to affect the healthworkers in such a dramatic fashion. Many healthcare workers had thought the same way. The public were frightened as well. If the healthcare workers are falling ill, who is there left to run the system? Are not the healthcare workers the ones who are supposedly the most informed and best equipped to deal with such diseases? I suppose many people would not relish working in such an environment. There were times when I went to work and I would feel a little off-colour, muscle ache. Only went I set off to work would I get these feelings! It's amazing how these things can paralyse oneself. But being rationale helps. Thinking helps. Self control helps. Fortunately, I was able to control myself. How about at work? Controlling oneself is one thing, but other people? There were many anxious nurses. One thing I found strange on my ward was some nurses take less than adequate precautions working in a nonSARS ward. A few would even object to working conditions where they had to wear the N95 mask. Wearing an N95 mask continuously is highly uncomfortable. Of course, I do not deny this but even the utmost urging by me couldn't persuade a minority to continuously don the N95 for their own personal safety. Can a N95 mask be worn continuously? Yes, it can. I proved it to my staff by wearing the N95, goggles, protective cap and sleeping in a chair on the ward the whole night. Although asleep, I was aware that I must not touch my face or maks with my hands unwittingly. It was very uncomfortable but I did it to show by example what can be done. The end result was more acceptance of the use of a N95 mask during work. Maybe my personal experience is not good enough for some of you. In one hospital where nearly half of the Intensive Care Unit had contracted the illness, nurses had to be drafted in from other sources. But it's impossible to suddenly find adequately trained Intensive care nurses from nowhere. In a crisis, we had had to just make do with the resources we had. One nurse was asked where she came from - her reply was "I'm a community nurse!". Courage or stupidity? One has to admire her courage in transferring to a completely different environment and enduring the hard lessons of Intensive Care medicine. Stupid? Success is working together. She must have been even more scared than I ever was yet she controlled herself to go to work and work for the common good. Some people talk of conquering one's fear. One thing I learnt is that one has to be in control of one's emotions. Don't let the fear control you. You must conquer the fear and use the fear to increase your determination. I believe fear is something that should be controlled and used as your tool. Not the other way round. This is what I told myself. This is what I hope people can learn from this message.
Academic-wise, I hope you answered to the question/topic or else you'd get low marks no matter how good the essay is. Man... just trust me to ruin a good thread...
That was just a rough copy, I fixed all the grammar and spelling and what not. Then I ran it by my teacher to see if it was ok for me to do a intro into my paper and he said it was. So, I was working on my essay, I finally got it finished after soo many hours. It ended up being 16 pages (keep in mind i am only in grade 9). then...drumrolll plz....IT DELETED! the whole thing! I was freaking, I started cursing, i threw a sneaker at my computer and everything. I was about to call my teacher and explain to him why i couldn't pass in this paper which is worth quite a bit of my paper, but instead I called my sister up in nb. She lives with her boyfriend up there, they are both at similar colleges. Anyways, her bf studies computer engineering (lucky for me) and he was able to help me retrace my file. I was so happy. So after all this work and everything I better get a damn good mark...lol And don't worry wilfredlgf, I answered to the point and everything, and I ran the intro by my teacher and he said it was a great idea. RJCMGP
Mmmmmm, you never answered whether it was formal or not. It didn't seem too formal since essays don't include I, contractions etc. You are simply stating points. I'm curious why you have to do a 16 page essay? Even in Grade 10, the maximum I've ever done was a 5 paragraph essay. Here are some errors: My research was very thorough indeed, but there was something missing, something I couldn’t quite place my finger on. This lead me to a further realization, it’s not about understanding where the virus come from PS is citation supposed to be involved?
Yodums, I think you don't work hard enough if you can only do 5 pages!! on a more serious note, start of by saying "Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome(SARS)" at the beginning of the essay. And SARS is not Sars. You need to use capital letters.
SARS, everyone has their own opinions about it so here are mine. In a way, SARS was a good disease because: 1. it revealed the true color of each nation as well as people around me 2. it prompted new meaures and precedures to prepare us for the REAL and more nasty bugs we WILL eventually get in the future. SARS really didn't killed that many people and if so, only the weak and old, generally. I'm talking about the big picture. 3. there are so many lessons can be learnt from this SARS outbreak Of course, i think the front line medical workers are the ones who bared the brunt of this mess, a mess that got magnified due to incompetent politians: lies, coverup and deception of the communist china (I don't mean HK), and the softy bleeding heart human right protectionists and naive canadian politians that were afraid to aggressively test and quarantine suspects early on. The toronto mess was started by ONE affected person, and he or she was in the hospital already. Toronto's mayor doesn't even know what is WHO. What should be done? just follow SG, they have SARS victims, took effective action right away, SARS got nipped at the bud. Point #2 hopefully prepare USA to deal with west nile and monkeypox, exotic diseases that finally hit the USA which was lucky not to get sars and mad cow disease. US banned all beef import from canada because of 1 case of mad cow (thousands tested todate: none infected) while in mid states their deer population is infested with chronic wasting disease (mad deer disease). Point #3. Too many to list so i'll pass this one On the home front, i was humored to see how paranoid of people around me. I was going to chinatown for lunch almost everyday because i was getting great services and with no waiting. So overall, i think there are more good than bad sides of SARS.
Bleh, 5 paragraphs. It's useless to write more than 5 because the exam time given is only 2 hours and you can only do a 5 paragraph essay in that time. At least this is how it works here. The only time you would get a huge 1 -2 page essay are assignments. Usually worth 10% of your mark.
ONE OR TWO PAGES?!?! That's it?! I've written a 2000 word essay before and that was worth 30% of my mark!
Depends what grade you're in. The Ontario curriculum sucks if you ask me. The biggest essay I've done so far was 1000 words and that was only 2 pages so, yeh. It was worth 7% of my mark. I'm in Grade 10.
Yeah, I'm in gr 10 too but private schools don't generally follow the Ontario curriculum. i.e. I am on summer break already. RJCMGP: Hope you did good! Can't wait to hear what you got
While I appreciate the points of where i went wrong, as i said it was only a rough copy and i fixed all the grammatical errors and whatnot, so chill ppl. I have to pass it in on mon and i will tell you guys what he says about it
Hehe it's funny listening to high school ppl talk about their LONG essays. Btw.. in terms of essay writing.. the first person (I) is not bad at all. Historians/political scientists and other humanitarians use I in their papers. Sometimes in their thesis they use it as emphasis. I will address the issue regarding.. blah blah.. I have taken the liberty of including key sidepoints in my footnotes. (Statements like these would usually be placed in your intro.) Nothing wrong with high school kids writing it in their social studies/English papers either. Of course if your teacher explicitly says he/she doesn't like it..then don't do it. REMEMBER THIS. YOU ARE WRITING FOR YOUR TEACHER. Write it for the teacher and you'll get a good mark.. I was top student in English 12 (I did AP) for that very reason. Sucking it up and following her guidelines. Of course now that I've hit 4th year.. it's all about my style. I'm in History/International Relations.. and I assure you.. i don't even think twice about what I learned in High school. Just remember.. the level of expectation will rise incredibly.. like a gigantic leap.. Well at least for me.. haha.. but then again I was in a special Arts program for the keeners ^^ Actually for my grad thesis.. I have to write a 60 page thesis on something really obscure that I'll have to do intensive research. And no general topics like SARS or what have you. Something so damn specific you'll be like.. wtheck?? ^^ I didn't know such books existed. Oh did I mention that this one thesis is worth 12 credits.. or the equivalent of 2 full year courses? HAHA.. @@
