The Working Poor: Invisible In America

The title of “Emerging Scholars” was given to a group of ethnic individuals with varying backgrounds that made them struggle, but ultimately, the students were strong enough to achieve what they had always wanted, a promising future. A required reading for these students enrolled in the University of Massachusetts’ 190R class was titled The Working Poor: Invisible in America by David K. Shipler, a book reminiscing numerous sociological books that are composed of a series of interviews for the sake of proving/disproving a theory. The theory this time was how the poor are not always unemployed and are still struggling in America in numerous different ways, in home life, health, education and more. There were many daunting tales told in Shipler’s

I immediately made the connection of incarceration to the idea of institutionalization, the idea of people being exploited by being reprogrammed to accept and conform to strict controls due to their environment, due to the fact that my Introduction to Legal Studies professor brought it up and it reminded me of my introduction 100-level Sociology class that I took the previous semester. Henceforth, my first approach to the project was to try and find a solution as to prevent institutionalization from even happening. However, trying to find a solution involved getting rid of areas where people had to give up control, including prisons, asylums and even the likes of some schools. Using information from the seminar alone, it was made obvious to me that in a sort of Marxism type of ideology, the country and government need the likes of prisons, mental hospitals and education-induced places for the good of the people and to benefit the economy. Going back to nonfiction book, however, I realized the solution was already found and that people were already endorsing it—rehabilitation programs to re-socialize. So far, I already had two sources stemming from my lecture and the book given to us. Next, I had to extend my research further as to who was incarcerated in America and what really happens post-incarceration. Following the current political

All that was left was to practice, which is what I did several times before it was my turn to present. One of the benefits for presenting last is learning from your classmates’ mistakes, and a common theme amongst them was the time limit. Originally, when I practiced for the first time, I timed myself to about eight minutes, which just would not do. By the time I had to present, I had my presentation to five minutes the last time I had practiced and when it came to the real deal I presented in under five minutes. When researching, one gets so caught up in all the information that they want to share with others that it can get a bit overwhelming but I think I executed it successfully enough. Looking back on it, I do not think there are any drastic changed I would have done to my project, he incarceration rates are always changing after all. I am even proud that I was able to reconnect my project back to the book because almost everyone in the class failed to say where their research came from and I did that and