Summary- McDonald's profitablilty

My essential research question at the beginning of this passion project was to understand what affects the profitability of McDonald's.  I was interested in this topic because a friend of mine's dad recently lost his job after working with the company for over 10 years. When he talked about it he said "McDonald's really isn't doing well right now" which was surprising because they are everywhere.

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        Throughout my research process I have uncovered the the relationship between McDonald's and their customers. McDonald's is the most popular fast food restaurant in the World. With over a billion stores and counting, minor changes to the business model results in changes of thousands of dollars. There are many factors that determine how the franchise will stand in the constantly changing business world. Since 2005 McDonald's has seen an increase in nearly 10 million dollars annually.  Part of this growth is accredited to the healthier menu options.

         Through thousands of letters and complaints McDonald's finally answered the demands in bringing breakfast to the all-day lunch/dinner menu. Deemed a "no brainer" , McDonald's had been holding out for the extreme makeover for years because it seemed that costs would out way the benefits. Through just one week of the menu change has resulted in a 4.5 percent increase in daily revenue. This new move comes after the chain hit its lowest quarterly growth in the past 3 years.

           For years McDonald's has been at the helm of fast food industry due to their inexpensive, quality food. However, the luxury of getting a burger on the run is a fad that has seen its end in an age where subway and Chipotle control the fast food market. McDonald's has began a transition to an intensive approach that includes table service and a thicker patty. In the article "McDonald's Beefs Up Its Range with a Meatier Mac" author, Saabira Chaudhuri, discusses the businesses new approach to fast food. 

      McDonalds has implemented many changes in the past year in an attempt to re attract the customers whom have supported them for years. 

What Matters More

This fall I was applying to a handful of colleges, and it seemed like for at least a little while, my whole world revolved around the stressful admission process.  Coming from a well-off suburb of Chicago there is a lot of pressure placed on students to attend highly selective schools. This got me thinking about why there is so much emphasis on the college you attend? I wanted to know if the school you attend makes a difference in overall success in life? So over the past few months I have researched the areas of success in terms of financial, but also overall well-being, the preconceived ideas about the name of schools and the benefits of a college degree.

Where you go to school does not necessarily determine financial success. More selective schools do, on average, give people a better chance at financial success.  The “Ivies” do attract big name recruiters, and have some of the world’s top professors, but according to the Forbes article, “Do Ivy League Schools Still Matter?” a degree from an Ivy League school mostly raises an employer’s perception of that person’s initial performance. Typical graduates that attended an Ivy League school earn more than twice as much as people who went to other schools.

Does attending a selective school generate higher earning potential and is the benefits of getting a four year degree outweigh the burden of debt? College graduates on average have higher employment rates, larger salaries, and better interpersonal skills than someone with just a high school diploma. The demand for quality college education has increased; the modern job market puts a lot of emphasis on degrees.  People who attend college have a far better chance at finding a job and being “successful” in life.  The earnings a person receives with a bachelor's degree still trump the student debt in most cases. “When you add up the premium that college grads benefit from, which can amount to upwards of $10,000 each year, and multiply it by a career that lasts for about 45 years, the cost of a college education is well worth it.” says Carnevale.

Success after college is determined by your personality as well as ability to communicate, negotiate, and lead.  All these characteristics are who you are as a person not the school you attended.  There are numerous examples of people attending average schools and achieving great financial success and it had nothing to do with the name of the school he or she attended.

The college you go to for the most part does not matter as much as the types of experiences you have while you are there.  This is true for not only your experience while at school, but also the overall satisfaction with life after graduation.   This made me think, what was it that people are looking for from a higher education other than just money? People go to college to obviously earn a degree so they can get a job, but there is so much more that goes into a college experience. People grow and really find out who they are as people.  In all my research the following study confirmed my intuition that there was something more than school reputation or earning potential that matters in life… According to the Gallop Purdue Index served 60,000 college graduates of all ages on their success not in dollars but, instead on engagement in their jobs and overall well-being.  The index measures success not in dollars and job titles but in graduates’ engagement in their employment and, separately, their own well-being, as determined by their reported satisfaction with five dimensions of life: their relationships, their physical health, their community, their economic situation and their sense of purpose. The study uncovered four key activities or experiences that had lasting impact after graduation and drove higher engagement at their jobs and overall well-being.  If graduates did any one or more of the following during college 1) developed a relationship with a mentor 2) engaged in a semester or longer project 3) participated in a job/internship that related to the field they were interested in 4) got deeply involved with an organization or cause there was a significant difference in their scores on the well-being index.  An additional factor mentioned was being a part of a diverse community, which was a deeper belief in their specific school as a unique place. 

My overall conclusion after learning about this topic is that you should chose a college that is a good fit for you and not worry about the name of the school.  Because a person’s success comes from within not the school he or she attended. 

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There are many factors that will and won’t determine a child’s success. I’ve learned that one of the most important factors is money. For most adults, money is a huge incentive in what jobs they decide to do in the future; in adolescents the presence of money in their life factors into the job that they are hired for in the future.

In my second blog post I talked about a doctor who had high ambitions of winning a Nobel Award but after a reunion with colleagues, he learned that several of his peers who weren’t as smart as he was earned a significantly higher paycheck than he did. Upon hearing this he switched specialties to earn more money instead of achieving his goal of the Nobel Award. Aside from just the ambition to earn more money, the present availability of money in the early years of a child’s life is vital and can affect their future. Research has found that “Children in lower income families have worse cognitive, social-behaviour and health outcomes.” The saying goes: money can’t buy you happiness, but the absence of money definitely will not grant you happiness whatsoever. If you aren’t content with the amount of money you make from work then it’ll be difficult to become happy. Those who live in a family with low incomes tend to fare worse than those with money.

Aside from money, I researched about the effects extracurricular has on the child’s future. What I found was that the amount of activities a child participates in has no correlation with their success. Although I had no prior confirmation of this knowledge, I always assumed this to be true. I didn’t take part in many extracurricular, but I played the violin for 10 years and what I’ve learned from that time has taught me much more than what I could learn from doing a multitude of activities all at once.

The Post for the Lazy People - Summary Blog

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The research of my topic went beyond much more than what I originally intended. I picked the topic of "stock market" because that was what I was generally interested in. I'd been researching stocks for a couple months and thought that this project would provide a great opportunity to do more research on what I love. Never was this project overtime consuming or worthless, and I actually thought that this project further enlightened me about my career. Business can be a difficult field, especially if you don't know what you're talking about. But my past blog posts have really helped me understand how the stock market works. Some of my sub-topics were; Market trends, dividends, shorting stocks, the and the RSI Index. Although all of these topics can be confusing, my research and hopefully my blogs made things much more clear for me to analyze. The topics just have become more business vocabulary that will be good for the future. I look forward to applying my knowledge to my college courses and impress all of them with what I know!

Jeremy Lesauski

The End?

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I have learned many things during my time researching my topic. My original question started out as just ’What affects what people buy during different seasons?’ and quickly took a drastic turn to talk about sales and how to buy something worth it. I have learned that many people online write post or articles that tell you when the best months are to buy things, but don’t explain why. I’ve learned that you can get cheap airline tickets simply by looking at them in incognito mode and I've explained my personal process in buying items i’m not 100% sure on. I’ve even learned that my overall question, is more common sense than a question and that you just need basic knowledge to actually tell when to buy products, but it definitely helps to know some economics because then you can understand it and actually know why it happens. I think, most importantly, I’ve learned that people are psycho when it comes to Black Friday, i’m kidding, it’s not the most important, but it is the most surprising. Most importantly, I’ve learned that there are many people who write about how to “cheat” the markets and buy things cheap, but companies aren’t dumb, they don’t live under rocks with no access to internet, they can see all of these posts and easily change prices to invalidate their arguments/articles. This ended up raising more questions for me than it answered like; maybe these authors are really just writing these for the companies and they are making the reader want to buy goods of season, and those prices are really higher than in season. Maybe it’s all some conspiracy, like the Illuminati.  I don’t know, it just seems like companies would do something about it because it technically means they are losing some profits if people buy things when they’re cheaper, or it just means they change the time they raise prices so it’s flipped, I guess i’ll never truly know because I don’t see myself going into any career related to this, but, I can always wonder.

In the end, I learned many interesting things related, and not even remotely related to my topic, all of which were worthwhile. I look forward to applying my somewhat new found knowledge to my own purchases. And I am absolutely never going Black Friday shopping, ever.  

Blog Post 6

Synthesis

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During my time researching how to invest prosperously, I obtained information about success stories from model investors such as Warren Buffett and Chris Camillo as well as tactics that have failed such as not diversifying and letting emotions dictate decisions. When asked how to invest prosperously, using the knowledge I’ve gained, I would respond that the best tactics are to diversify your portfolio, think rationally, and ultimately use as many resources as available to make well-informed decisions.                  

According to the article, “Investing disasters - when bad investments go even more bad!,” one up-and-coming investor, John, made the rookie mistake of not diversifying his portfolio. He put all of his investments into 3 small company’s stocks which is  the equivalent of a cardinal sin in investing. This was the first mistake that led to a downhill spiral of John’s capital. On the contrary, Warren Buffett, the most successful investor of all time, has one of the most diverse investment portfolios. Not only does he have a diversity of stocks, he also has holdings in many other companies not sold on the stock market. It is these outside of the box tactics that investors must use in order to invest prosperously.

According to the article, “Five Minute Investing: Things to Avoid,” falling in love with a stock is one of the most important things to avoid when investing because this has to do with emotion and nothing else. Investing is not a business of emotion, but instead strategy and rationality. Even if a stock has done so well for you for so many years, most of the time, this will come to an end. Investors often believe that “bull markets” will go on forever. By thinking irrationally like this, investors are setting themselves back. Another irrational way to invest would be the common practice of buying a stock in a downward trend. Although this may seem like a high risk high reward situation, which it is, the risk is usually far too high to be a smart investment. In order to yield a profit on these types of stocks, two things must go right. First, the investor must be able to predict which stocks will actually end their downward trend before going all the way to zero. Second, the timing of this must be impeccable, the investor must know exactly when it will turn around and buy the stock at the right price to yield a profit. The chances of being able to predict both of these is very slim, therefore, not a good investing decision. If investors practice more rational thinking, they will not be put in those sticky situations.

The last and possibly most important skill to invest prosperously is the ability to use your resources to make well-informed decisions. Successful investor, Chris Camillo, perfected this strategy. According to the article, “How One Amateur Investor Spots Stocks Before Wall Street,” Camillo used being an amateur as an advantage over the professionals by using his “more diversified set of friends and colleagues throughout the country that know more things than those on Wall Street”. He used people close to him to provide him with useful information about companies. For example, when his wife informed him that Target was going to do the Missoni line, he immediately went to Target to try and judge whether it was going to be successful or not. Once he realized it was a hit, he immediately invested. Within 48 hours, he had already tripled his investment. Warren Buffett, another successful investors was resourceful by reading about every aspect of the company he was investing in by studying their company records and researching their management.

There is no magic method that can guarantee success when investing, however, the only way to truly ensure safety when investing is to diversify your portfolio, think rationally, and ultimately use as many resources as available to make well-informed decisions. These tried and true investing tactics have been tested by some of the most successful investors such as Warren Buffet and Chris Camillo. Investing comes with a risk but there are ways to ensure some level of security.

Celebrities Are Just Like Us

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Throughout all of my research, I have focused really focused on celebrities and how exactly some of them have financial troubles. Why exactly are some celebrities prosperous and some fall into such deep financial trouble that they are forced to file for bankruptcy? As simple as it may seem, it all depends on what the specifically does with their money. If they take measures to ensure that at least some of their money is saved, they won’t go bankrupt. But, if they are careless with their money and don’t do anything to save it, they will end up bankrupt.

For the first part of my research, I decided to look into exactly what kind of celebrities go bankrupt and if there is a correlation between a certain profession in the “celebrity realm” and going bankrupt. Based on the article “13 Celebrities Who Went Bankrupt”, the majority of the celebrities that were profiled were in fact in the music industry. People such as MC Hammer, Toni Braxton, and Marvin Gaye had at one point gotten into extreme debt and had to file for bankruptcy. After reading this article, one might think that all celebrities have a greater chance at becoming bankrupt. But, after synthesizing all of my evidence, I believe that this is in fact just a coincidence. The profession that one is in does not determine if you will go bankrupt or not; it is based off how how one manages their money and saves.

In the second part of my research, I decided to look specifically at one individual and the events that occurred to make them lose so much money. In the article “Everything MC Hammer Blew His Fortune On”, it zeros in on MC Hammer and his rise (and fall) to fame. It describes Hammer spending millions of dollars on cars, houses, helicopter, entourages; pretty much anything that you can imagine, MC Hammer spent money on. The one thing I learned about this is that Hammer was just stupid with his money and didn’t save any of it. He was making of millions of dollars, so he thought he could just buy whatever he wanted and it wouldn’t matter because his income was so high. Even though one’s income can be extremely large, that doesn’t mean you just stop saving money. You need to make sure that you preserve at least some of your money so you can sustain a great life forever.

In the third portion of my research, I decided to look at the celebrities that actually save and the measures they take to ensure that their money will last them their entire lifetime. The article “Stars Who Save: What We Can Learn From These Modest Celebrities”, the reader learns that there are in fact numerous celebs that actually save their money in great ways. Countless celebrities do things such as save a majority of their income and put it in bank accounts, have their kids wear hand me downs, spend a conservative amount of money even though they make millions; some of them even cut coupons. Most would think that celebs would never do things such as this, but in actuality, they are just like us. Just because they make more money than Americans doesn’t mean that they are any different. A majority of celebs take drastic measures to ensure that their money is saved.

In the final section of my research, I decided to take a different direction and focus more on the high taxes celebs have to pay and how they then try to conceal their money from the government, getting them into even more trouble. In the article “5 Lessons From Celebrities Who Cheat on Their Taxes”, it describes celebrities such as Nicholas Cage who fell into deep trouble with the IRS because they did things such as concealing money, falsely filing for bankruptcies, and many other things. This article calls into question:is having more money more of a burden than people who don’t have as much money? There really is no way for celebrities to get out of paying such high taxes because they make so much money, but even with taxes they still have a greater amount of money than most people in the US. As long as they save and are honest, they will not fall into troubles such as issues with the IRS and bankruptcies.

Overall, I learned a lot about celebrities and why some go bankrupt and some do not. The key is for us all to remember that celebrities are just like us. They need to make good choices and save their money in order to ensure that they will have a prosperous life forever. The people that go bankrupt are also just like us; they due to the fact that they spent their money carelessly, they wound up in deep debt and had to file for bankruptcy. If everyone is the US saves money and uses their money wisely, we will not fall into such troubles.

I really enjoyed learning about this topic and I am positive that I will continue to research in the future because I truly find it interesting.

Injuries Effects on Athletes

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         In my overall blog posts I learned that in any sport at anytime you can get injured, and after your injury you may make an extraordinary recovery or not make one at all. Sometimes you can control how you recover and sometimes you do not have that luxury. Looking back on my blog posts I will highlight some of the key ideas and quotes.
When you are starting college on scholarship, there seems like there is nothing that could go wrong. Then you realize that it could all be taken away if you plant on your knee the wrong way in practice. Injury, although sometimes is very treatable, triggers a number of emotional responses. According to an article on NCAA.org, the emotional responses include, “sadness, isolation, irritation, lack of motivation, anger, frustration, changes in appetite, sleep disturbance, and disengagement.” All of these can be signs of mental illnesses because of injuries that not just affected your performance in the sport you love, but also could have taken away your free education and a chance at the next level.
It seems like there is nothing better than being a pro athlete, but is it really worth not being able to run around and play with your  kids at a young age? A former pro athlete chimed in on it. According to an article from the Washington Post a former offensive lineman, Pete Kendall states, “I can’t run anymore,” he then goes on to say that, “I can’t play basketball with my kids, can’t walk for any extended distance.” This definitely makes people realize the effects that playing a professional sport does to you. You have to wonder that if Kendall could go back would he change his path in life, and just play in college and get a degree so he can be effective in the work force?
Another point I would like to make is that all injuries are not career ending. Actually some people make remarkable recoveries and come back and compete at a championship level. I will refresh you on a few people who made it through a terrible injury. Niki Lauda- He was “one of the best drivers” in Formula 1 history who was trapped in a fire, and went into a coma. Surprisingly, he was back racing in six weeks, and took 4th place in the Italian GP. This in my opinion is one of the biggest miracles in all of sports to be in a coma and then a few weeks later be back to the sport that you love. This shows that athletes can come back from terrible injuries and still make an impact. Maria Sharapova- She was a tennis player who was “dominating every court,” despite a nagging shoulder injury that took her out of play and into surgery. Many thought that she would never be the same, and some thought she would never even return. But through vigorous rehab she was back on the court in a year. She won the French Open capping off an already impressive career making her one of the best to ever play. No matter what sport you are returning to I admire someone who can come back and play at such a high level.
I concluded that it truly depends on the person, if it is really worth playing professional sports, and risking injury.

Is money the most important thing?

My original question was to try and find out how record companies determine the best type of music to use to make the most money.  Throughout my research I found that they sign all sorts of artists and genres in order to do this so I created another question to keep my research going which is how do record companies make their money so i could learn more about the process of what they do.  I found that they really do take a gamble when signing those artists, but they also rip off the artists and take away all of their artistic freedom.

Through the article "How Record Labels Really Make Their Money" I found that record labels really take a risk on who they sign when signing an actual artist and that they really rip off the artists because of this.  They make the majority of the money when an album or even a song sells because of how much of a risk they are taking by signing a new and upcoming artist.

According to the article “How Record Labels Invest” by the IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industry), spend somewhere between $500,000-$2,000,000 in order to sign an artist and give them all the benefits that they get with a signing (these statistics are based on major record labels not independent record labels).  This money is spent on many things like advances, recording costs, video production, tour support, and marketing/promotion. This is an add on to the last article where it goes in depth on how much money is actually being spent on each artist and it’s an alarming amount and I never thought it would be this much.  in my opinion it kind of explains why they rip the artists off so much with all of their rules.

In the article called “Record Contracts Explained by Richard Salmon he explains how the record contracts work and how lenient they are with all of their legal binds when offering a contract to a certain artists.  It explains that because of how much money and how much of a risk the record companies are putting into these artists that they create many rules that the artists have to follow like they can’t go to any other label to record a song or even be featured on another artist’s album without their permission which makes sense, but still seems a little over the top with certain things.

According to the article “Independent or contract: Do musicians still need record labels like Young Money and Sony?” by Alicia Adejobe many artists are starting to become independent with the help of all teenagers favorite thing, social media.  In this article it talks about how many artists are becoming independent so they don’t have to r=follow all of the rules that the record companies impose on them.  They are then using social media to promote their music and tours because they don’t have the record companies to help them.  Because of this though the record companies are becoming more lenient and signing different contracts where they will be more in the promoting and tour aspect of it and back up the artists as opposed to them actually controlling them.

Overall I found that record companies really make their money by ripping off the artists and controlling their artistic careers.  But through the new age of technology with social media and streaming services more famous artists are becoming solo artists or independent artists in order to make the most of their careers.  For the first time in the modern music era artists seem to have the upper hand especially the new artists because they have many services to start their careers and record companies will soon have to change if they want to be a major factor in artists careers and be the big super powers that they used to be in the music business in order to make the most money possible.

Conclusion of how an Injury Affects an Athletes Value

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Overall Question: How does an injury within an athlete affect the value of the athlete?

Throughout many years of athletics, athletes have suffered a wide variety of injuries.  A few examples of these injuries include broken bones, concussions, ACL injuries, etc.  After an athlete suffers an injury they work as hard as they can to get back onto the field or court.  They go through surgery, then rehab, and then back into the sport slowly.  The value of athletes changes greatly after they suffer injuries.  Through my research I have come to the conclusion that overall the value of athletes decreases as they suffer an injury and return to the sport.  

In my previous 5 blog posts I mentioned many of the most popular sports in the country and discussed how the value of a player would be affected after they got an injury.  Looking at football, baseball, and basketball I have found that when an athlete gets injured in those sports their value goes down.  The main reason an athlete loses value is due to a lack of performance that they had before the injury occurred.

These injuries are bad for the player because they get a cut in a pay check, can lose a scholarship, or may not be able to come back and play at all.  In many of the articles I read, I got to see specific examples of players that had an injury.

Overall, when an athlete in any sport suffers an injury and they come back and play they lose value.

ACL Injury Review

ACL Tear in Review


    Overall, throughout my blog posts I found that the tearing of the ACL not only is painful, but the process of repairing it and living a normal life afterwards are both quite difficult.  The surgical process is not only expensive, costing a couple thousand, but the chances of the ACL being fully repaired are quite slim.  According to my own physician Dr. Dan Campbell, "The chances of a fully recovered ACL are less than 40%." So yes it may be repaired, but it won't be repaired to the way it was before.  More importantly, for a doctor to have the obligation to repair such an injury requires many years of schooling past an undergraduate degree, about 5 to 6 years  until one is ready to perform such a surgery.  The ACL is such a small but crucial part of the leg that once is torn, many other functions of the leg are jeopardized as well.  That is why athletes such as Derrick Rose are having a difficult time coming back from an ACL injury and performing like he used to.  Financially, it's America better to tear one's ACL then it will be in the future because statistically surgery payments, mainly in are increasing rapidly each year due to the economy.
     All in all, tearing of one's ACL may be one of the worst injuries out there no just because of the pain itself, but the terrible long-lasting affects athletically, and short-lasting affect financially.  If I were to ever tear my ACL, I'll have to maybe reconsider how to plan out my life athletically afterwards because I know that once I tear my ACL, there is a likelyhood of never going back to the same person I was physically.
   

Thriving Superheroes

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Over the course of this blog post, I had the task of researching the profitability of superheroes to movie studios and why they are so popular today. During the course of the past few weeks I have researched topics such as popularity, profitability, and impact on people’s lives. After completing my research I now have the ability to answer my research question. Superheroes and superhero movies are so popular today because of their profitability and the effect that they have on people's everyday lives.

To begin with, there isn’t a type of movie more popular today than superhero movies and there is a reason for that. People love to go see superhero movies so it doesn’t even really matter if it is a remake or not. In the article  “James Franco Explains Why Studios Keep Remaking Superhero Films ” by Melia Robinson on Business Insider,  James Franco talks about this by using the examples of the new Spiderman movies and the new Man of Steel movie. His basic point is that people are going to go see these movies anyway even if the same type of movies came out only a few years earlier, and they will still turn a pretty good profit. Which is evident with Superman and Spiderman as they both have previous movie series that had been released in the early 2000’s. Yet, the remakes made over 100 million each. Movie studios notice this and that is why every studio wants to try their hand at getting a superhero movie because they know how much profit they can gain from it. Take Avengers for example, the ultimate superhero team, behind the justice league in my opinion,  that was brought to the big screen produced over a billion dollars in profit in the box office. That is a ludicrous amount of money, and what brought it in was simply a three hour movie. However, all of the profits don’t just come from the box office. These types of movies are enticing as well because of the amount of merchandise sales that are gained from them. Most kids love superheroes,so when they go to a store and see a Spiderman toy or a Batman shirt, they’re going to want to get it. However, today it’s more than just little kids who love the merchandise. People from all ages, myself included, will gladly spend money on a Green Lantern coffee mug, or a Wolverine phone case. This is evident all across the world as well. In the article  “Which Superhero Earns 1.3 Billion A Year?”, it shows just the sheer amount of profits that can be gained over the course of one single year, by ONE individual 

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/

This graph shows just the sheer amount of profit that these heroes can bring. I mean does nobody else find it ridiculous that a teenage kid who got bit by a spider produced over $1.2 billion in profits in ONE YEAR. But take a second to think about it, how much do you see something related to Spiderman or donning his trademark blue and red colors or his spider? More than you notice because it’s very normal now. Superheroes are all over the place, which is evidenced in this graph by the huge amount of sales in countries other than the U.S. and Canada.

However, the profits aren’t everything as they are more for the studios and the companies themselves rather than the actual movie goers. For the movie goers these heroes have a much deeper meaning than just fictional characters on a screen. These heroes can represent things such as an escape, a role model, or even someone to relate to for anyone and everyone. Think about it, every superhero story has problems and tragedy in it. Well, so does the real world. In the articles  Why America Loves Superheroes by the Digital Universe and The Psychology Behind Superhero Origin Stories by Smithsonian.com. it describes how people relate to these stories in their own life through triumph, tragedy, grief, and all other sorts of emotions and problems that are encountered throughout everyday life. So even though these characters don’t exist in our world they still bring a tremendous amount of help to millions of fans and regular people. Some people also can find role models in heroes and want to better themselves because of it. Take Batman for example, he has no powers yet he fights villians and other heroes with incredible power. Even so, he rarely comes out on the losing end. How this affects others is many people would see that this man made himself and look what he has become. This then influences people to think about how they can make themselves better. All of this comes from a man dressed in a bat costume. But even on a larger scale, these heroes provide something that is sometimes very hard to find, and that is hope. The typical superhero story involves a hero who overcomes adversity, beats the bad guy, and gets a reward for it. But the main message of these stories is that good will always beat evil. And in today's society that can sometimes be hard to see. But through and through these characters provide that glimmer of hope, even if it simply acts as a distraction for a period of time. However, the one thing these characters give people more than anything else is belief. Every single superhero has something special about them, that's why they're super. Whether it's the ability to fly, a special green ring, a shield, invisibility, etc. All of them posses their own specialty, but the best thing is that so does every single human being in the world. And these heroes bring it out in people. When people see these heroes and all their awesome traits, they believe that they are awesome too and that they have a power of their own. Whether that is being the best cook, or driver, or whatever. This is so great because it brings people confidence and happiness that really couldn't be brought by anything else.

http://www.comicsforest.com/

In conclusion, superheroes and superhero movies are so popular today partly because of the effect that they have on society today. They seem to be around for the long term after going from comic books, to TV shows, to multi million dollar movie productions. I believe that this is a great thing because of the long list of benefits that these super beings can bring to society. I personally get chills whenever I watch some of my favorite superhero movies and I'm always interested in learning more. Such things as who would beat who in a fight, or if the world was getting invaded who would I choose to protect it are always crossing my mind and I know I'm not the only one. I may be biased since my father loved comics as a kid and his favorite types of presents are anything and everything doing with Spiderman, but I think that the entire world can agree with me on this. Whether it’s the movie studios or the fans across the globe these characters and movies only bring good things.

Disadvantages and Advantages of Competitive Sports

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I wanted to research how highly competitive sports affect athletes’ well being because I am a competitive athlete myself. I have noticed certain benefits and disadvantages of being a competitive athlete and wanted to research other advantages and disadvantages. The future well being of an athlete interested me because most people are athletes when they are children and teens, but when they become adults many of them don’t continue their sport. I was very curious if playing a sport led to a more successful and happier life as an adult.

I found that any sort of exercise can help an individual succeed and become physically and mentally stronger. These strengths lead to a happier and less stressful life which is the ultimate goal for most people. Competitive sports teach athletes to cope with stress, help them gain confidence, and make new friends. A more social life can lead to more connections later in life and good social skills. However, I did find some disadvantages of playing competitive sports. Some athletes experience extreme levels of pressure due to coaches, other athletes, parents, and spectators pushing them and judging them. I also found that kids with very forceful parents tend to experience lots of stress. I have experienced the same causes of stress but I have learned to deal with it and move on. There are pros and cons to playing a sport, but in the end I think that being a competitive athlete benefits individuals more than it hurts them.