An Influential Event

There are always events in our life that would linger in our memories for as long as we live. For me, that event is the day my dad graduated from polytechnic. At that point in time, I was in Secondary 4, on the verge of dropping out of school due to lack of interest in studies.

Back in secondary school, I was among the poor performing student. I did not have much interest in studies to begin with. All I thought of was to work once I completed my GCE O’Levels. This was due to the financial difficulties that my family faced. Coming from a family of eight, my parents’ income was barely enough to support us.

Upon realising our condition, my dad enrolled himself into Institute of Technical Education (ITE) at the age of 40. By the time he reached his mid-40s, he completed his Higher-Nitec. He then furthered his studies by doing a part-time diploma course in Singapore Polytechnic. On his graduation day, he was announced as among the top-performing students in his cohort. Looking at him struggle between work, family and studies inspired me to not give up and study harder. What inspired me most is the fact that throughout this period, he had to work full-time and raise six children.

It was during his graduation ceremony that I realised if he can do it, so do I. I started to spend more time in school and catch up with the things that I was lacking behind. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be where I am today.

For “if it is to be, it is all up to me.” - Aristotle

Reader Response Draft 3

In “Writing Your Way To Happiness”, Parker-Pope (2015) presents a series of research studies to highlight the benefits that people can gain from expressive writing. One of the benefits of expressive writing is that it helps to alleviate conflict between married couples. A research study was done on 120 married couples where they had to write about their conflict from a third-party perspective. The outcome showed an improvement in family relations among couples who engages in expressive writing as opposed to those who did not.

While the author (Parker-Pope, 2015) mentions that writing allows the writer to express his troubles and reconstruct his thoughts, it does not always result in a desirable outcome. This is because expressive writing allows him to freely express his thoughts, which may include his disgust toward the other party. In the case of a married couple, the wife, for instance, might write down all the negative attitudes and characteristics of her husband throughout their marriage life. Looking at all the unfavourable attitudes of her husband that she has written might only add on to her disgust towards her husband instead of alleviating the conflict. The tension between the couple would escalate if both the husband and wife frequently write about the negativity of their spouse. Therefore, instead of encouraging the couples to reconstruct their thoughts, it agitates their feelings toward their spouse and prolongs the conflict.

Furthermore, the process of writing might be seen as a hassle to couples who in conflict. According to Parker-Pope (2015), expressive writing is about writing and rewriting. This suggest that writing is not a one-off activity and it requires discipline, time and effort in order for us to gain its benefit. However, when facing a conflict, our emotions and moods are affected. Emotions play a critical role in our decision making. When the state of our emotions are unstable, it will affect our behaviour and result in poor decision-making (Lamia, 2010). This hinders us from achieving a meaningful outcome from expressive writing since our mind is not in the state of tranquility. Since writing requires a certain amount of disciplin and time, couples might do something else to divert their attention away from the conflict, such as watching movies or engage in physical activities, instead of engaging in expressive writing.

In addition to that, writing only helps to ease a conflict temporarily. Expressive writing enables the couple to express their problems such that it acts as a coping mechanism for them (Parker-Pope, 2015). However, these coping mechanism is only effective in the short run. As long as the couple do not take practical measures to improve their marital happiness, their conflict will not subside. If they do not address the root cause of their conflict, even if they engage in expressive writing, their conflict will persist in the long run.

In conclusion, there is no perfect and absolute mechanism that would best resolve conflicts within married couples. Expressive writing would be more effective in coping with these conflicts only if certain conditions are met. This includes regulating and controlling what is being written in order to avoid undesirable emotions. Also, couples should take additional measures beside writing so as to achieve an optimal outcome when dealing with a conflict.

(540 Words)

References:

Lamia, M. (31 December, 2010). Like it Or Not, Emotions Will Drive the Decisions You Make Today. From Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/intense-emotions-and-strong-feelings/201012/it-or-not-emotions-will-drive-the-decisions-you

Parker-Pope, T. (2015, February 12). Writing your way to happiness  [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/19/writing-your-way-to-happiness/?_r=0

Reader Response Draft 2

In “Writing Your Way To Happiness”, Parker-Pope (2015) presents a series of research studies to highlight the benefits that people can gain from expressive writing. One of the benefits of expressive writing is that it helps to alleviate conflict between married couples. A research study was done on 120 married couples where they had to write about their conflict for a third-party perspective. The outcome showed an improvement in family relations among couples who engages in expressive writing as opposed to those who did not.

While writing allows the writer to express his troubles and reconstruct his thoughts , it does not always result in a desirable outcome. This is because expressive writing allows him to freely express his thoughts, which includes his disgust toward the other party. In the case of married couple, the wife, for instance, might write down all the negative attitudes and characteristics of her husband throughout their marriage life. Looking at all the unfavourable attitudes of her husband that she has written might only add to her disgust towards her husband instead of alleviating the conflict. The tension between the couple would escalate if both the husband and wife frequently write about the negativity of their spouse. This prolongs the conflict between the couple and consensus would be hard to achieve. A mediator might need to intervene during the process of writing in order to guide and assist the couple.

Furthermore, the process of writing might be seen as a burden to couples who already have so many things to manage. Writing requires discipline, time and effort in order for us to gain its benefit. However, when facing a conflict, we usually do not think rationally and therefore our actions are reckless. This hinders us from achieving a meaningful outcome from expressive writing since our mind is not in the state of tranquility. Writing also requires a certain amount of time, which we better spend the time doing something else. For instance, couples who are in a conflict would better off be doing something that divert their attention from thinking about the conflict such as watching movies or engage in physical activities as opposed to writing. 

In addition to that, writing only helps to temporarily ease the problems that married couples face. Expressive writing enables the couple to express their problems such that it acts as a coping mechanism for them. However, these coping mechanism is only effective in the short run. As long as the couple do not take practical measures to improve their marital happiness, their conflict would not subside. For instance, if a couple who are facing with conflicts does not try to solve the root cause of their conflict, even if they engage in expressive writing, their conflict will persist in the long run. Their conflict would be worse if both the husband and wife uses expressive writing as a platform to mock their spouse and rant their anger severely.

In conclusion, there is no perfect and absolute mechanism that would best resolve conflicts within married couples. Expressive writing would be more effective in coping with these conflicts only if certain conditions are met. This includes regulating and controlling what is being written in order to avoid undesirable emotions. Also, couples should take additional measures beside writing so as to achieve an optimal outcome when dealing with a conflict.

Reader Response Draft 1

Reader Response Draft 1

In Writing Your Way To Happiness, Parker-Pope (2015) presents a series of research studies to prove that expressive writing helps to alleviate conflict between married couple and reduce dropout rates among college students. Several research studies were conducted with different social groups such as students, workers and married couples. The outcome of these research studies show that respondents life improved after they engaged in expressive writing. However, if we were to examine the root cause of the issues that these respondents experienced, the author’s claim might not hold true. Most of the time, conflict within the family arises from external problems such as financial and fidelity issues. Similarly, dropout rates among college students emerge when they face financial difficulties as well as pressure from their peers to conform to unhealthy activities. These problems will hamper the positive effects of expressive writing in addressing their personal problems.

One of the prime sources of family conflict and dropout rates is financial issue. Parker-Pope (2015) demonstrates to us that through expressive writing, married couples were able to pacify the conflict within the family. This is true if we are addressing mild conflict. As we can see, most issues that occur within the family are financial issue. According to a research study on the causes of marriage breakdown by Burns (1984), the author had listed financial difficulty as a major cause of divorce. She elaborates that material possessions ties and breaks a family. The only way to address this issue is via financial assistance to the family or an improvement in their financial status. Expressive writing does not address the root cause of the conflict, although it brings about emotional contentment to the victims. Similarly, dropout rates among college students that stem from financial issues must not be overlooked. When these students face financial difficulties, it hampers their motivation and drive to do well in school. Instead, it diverts their attention to the working world, so that they could support their own needs. Expressive writing would then crumble as it fails to address the very fundamental cause of this problem, which is the finance.

External influences from a third party also hampers the effects of expressive writing from taking place. One of the major causes that lead to conflict between married couples is the presence of a third person. This is known as fidelity. When the issue of fidelity occurs, trust among members of the family collapse. This problem will prolonge, so long as the third-person exist within the family tree. Expressive writing would be ineffective in mediating the conflict as it does not fix the third-party problem, but only provides emotional comfort to the victims.

Reader Response Outline

Main Idea/thesis statement

-       Expressive writing helps to alleviate conflict between married couple

-       It also improves grade points of students and reduce dropout rates

First supporting idea:

-       Financial difficulties as the root cause for both the cases

-       Conflict within family often arise as a result of financial issues

-       Dropout rates among students due to poor financial background, forcing them to start work at young age

Second supporting idea:

-       Third-party influences lead to the failure of expressive writing

-       Issues of fidelity within family leads to family conflict

-       Negative social mixing and peer pressure leads to dropout

Summary Writing

Writing Your Way to Happiness
by Parker-Pope

According to Parker-Pope (2015), there are several benefits that one can gain from expressive writing such as improving one’s personal life. This is evident in all of the examples which the author provides. In one of the research conducted on 40 college freshman at Duke University, expressive writing is seen to have evidently improved the grade point averages of students and significantly reduce the dropout rates. Similarly, another research was done on married couples where couples had to write about a conflict as a third party. The outcome showed an improvement in family relations as opposed to couples who did not engage in expressive writing.