http://www.radioone.fm/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/successful-man.jpg

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.

Does Extracurricular Matter?

http://static.zoonar.com/img/www_repository4/a2/26/e6/10_3dc31e7f7d9535bb73cc47a04aabe4be.jpg

As a young adult close to ending his career as a high school student and about to start his career as a college student the amount of extracurricular I’ve done in the past comes to mind when it comes to applying to schools. I personally haven’t done many extracurricular but the few that I have, I’ve invested many years of my life to. I believe that to certain extents, the extracurricular that children take part in do have some sort of effect on their future academic and career success. Steven D. Levitt, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago stated that he found no correlation between the amount of extracurricular a child takes part in with academic success. While I agree with Levitt’s finding that the amount of extracurricular has no effect on the child’s future success I believe what’s important is the quality instead of the amount. It may look good on paper that a child has taken Karate lessons for one year, piano lessons for two, gymnastics for 2, and so on, but the amount of time dedicated is so minimal that it has little to no effect. I personally have spent ten years of my life playing the violin and 7 of those years playing in the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestras. Even though it’s only one activity outside of school, the lessons I’ve learned as a musician are invaluable and would have been impossible to teach if I only played one or two years.

Money to Growth

https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/26/61056391_31343afdc6_b.jpg

In my community most kids my age take their status for granted and don’t fully realize how lucky we are to be where we are today. Children that have wealthy parents are bound to do better in school and therefore in their future lives than those who are less affluent. Research done by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation - a social policy and research charity - found that “Children in lower-income families have worse cognitive, social-behavioral and health outcomes” What this could mean is that from the beginning, if a child’s family doesn’t have a lot of money, they are already at a disadvantage in regards to their future success. Unicef found that “Low income affects direct measures of children’s well-being and development, including their cognitive ability, achievement and engagement in school, anxiety levels and behavior.” Not only are poorer families not able to supply a child with a better education, but the child’s mental well-being is directly affected as well. Because of a child's low economic status it could inhibit a child's opportunity to pursue professional career with higher skill levels.


For future research I plan to examine how a child's involvement in extracurricular activity impacts their future life. As a violinist who play's in the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra, it is my own belief that certain extracurricular can benefit a child's future growth.

                                                                       

                                                                A Child's Upbringing

http://weknowyourdreams.com/images/babies/babies-04.jpg

BLOG POST BODY PARAGRAPHS:  (Broken into easy to read paragraphs, formatting font to make it easier to follow main ideas, etc.)

I believe that a young child’s future career and dreams are significantly affected by the way they are influenced by their parents or role models from an early age. According to a study published in Child Development, the type of emotional care a child receives from their parents from around age 3 can affect their lives educationally, socially, and romantically for the next 20 to 30 years.

“Babies and toddlers raised in supportive and caring home environments tended to do better on standardized tests later on, and they were more likely to attain higher degrees as adults. They were also more likely to get along with their peers and feel satisfied in their romantic relationships.” This research shows that positive reinforcement from parents to a child proves to be beneficial to their future and would most likely mean that they would go onto get a better education and therefore a better job after graduating and getting their degree.

On a similar note, psychologist and postdoctoral researcher, Lee Daby of University of Delaware, conducted a study found that 10 percent of a budding student’s academic achievements were influenced based on the “quality of their home at the age of 3” Generally, the quality of a child’s future life improves depending on the quality of life they have at an early age. For example, if a child lives in a good neighborhood and is shown plenty of love from parents, the child is more likely going to have a better life as an adult from better life choices. For future research I will look into how a child's set economic status can affect their future career.

BLOG POST #2  

CATCHY TITLE: Money in Our Dreams

http://dreamatico.com/

BLOG POST BODY PARAGRAPHS:  (Broken into easy to read paragraphs, formatting font to make it easier to follow main ideas, etc.)

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/27/business/27richer.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Article: Gilded Paychecks Lure of Great Wealth Affects Career Choices

In this article, the New York Times reveals how certain doctors truly determine what they do based on the opportunity to gain immense wealth.

“Hoping to achieve breakthroughs in curing cancer, his specialty, he plunged into research, even dreaming of a Nobel Prize, until Wall Street reordered his life.”

“There were doctors at the reunion — very, very smart people,” Dr. Glassman recalled in a recent interview. “They went to the top programs, they remained true to their ethics and really had very pure goals. And then they went to the 20th-year reunion and saw that somebody else who was 10 times less smart was making much more money.”

“The opportunity to become abundantly rich is a recent phenomenon not only in medicine, but in a growing number of other professions and occupations. In each case, the great majority still earn fairly uniform six-figure incomes, usually less than $400,000 a year, government data show. But starting in the 1990s, a significant number began to earn much more, creating a two-tier income stratum within such occupations.”

“Others have moved to different, higher-paying fields — from academia to Wall Street, for example — and a growing number of entrepreneurs have seen windfalls tied largely to expanding financial markets, which draw on capital from around the world. The latter phenomenon has allowed, say, the owner of a small mail-order business to sell his enterprise for tens of millions instead of the hundreds of thousands that such a sale might have brought 15 years ago.”

I once thought that it was passion and the love of what one does in their work that drives their ambitions to do what they do, but this article by the New York Times proves differently. It seems that these doctors specifically choose that they would rather go to specialties that pay the most. For example, Dr. Glassman once dreamed of winning the Nobel Prize for cancer research but after a reunion, he learned that his colleagues who were not as smart as he was earned a much larger salary than him. For me, I would rather choose an occupation that I am happy with and can live with doing for the rest of my life than choose a job where I don't enjoy it but get a fat paycheck in.

For my next blog post I will look into how a child's upbringing by their parents affect the child's future career choice. For example, both my parents were doctors in China and right now, my brother is in medical school, studying to become a doctor. 

What Factors Determine Careers People Choose

http://www.careersincourtreporting.com

• Briefly explain why you are interested in studying your topic:  

I am interested in this topic because I’ve seen how certain people take jobs that they enjoy but don’t pay that well and people who get decent paying jobs but don’t enjoy them.

• The overall question I plan on answering by the end of the project:

What factors determine careers people choose?

• Sub questions I will need to answer in order to answer the overall question:

-How does money affect certain individual’s attitudes?

-How does one’s upbringing affect desire to pursue career goals?

-How does society affect career choices?

-How does the environment around a person affect a person’s dreams?

-

• My plan of research (what specific Library Databases, specific websites, names of authors, people, etc. will I pursue to find the answers to the questions above):

-Student Resources in Context

-Gale Virtual Reference Library

-AP Images

-Google News

TEST BLOG POST

TEST BLOG POST