Application Essays Exam 1_8A:
Chapters: 1 This is Geography, 2 Population and health, 3 Migration, Chapter 4: Culture and Social Media, Chapter 5: Languages, Chapter 6: Religions
Complete any TWO of the following essays. If you complete more than two, only the first two will be graded. Essay exams must include your original work and must be done independently. All material not originating from you must be cited properly.
Please review San Jacinto College’s honor code statement: https://www.sanjac.edu/procedure-v5001ba-cheating-plagiarism-collusion-and-fabrication
Format: Submission should be Times New Roman, 12 pt. font
Only include your name in the header.
For EACH essay question: no more than three pages double-spaced maximum , (1.5 page double-spaced minimum, about. Include all references on a separate page.
1. This question asks you to consider the cultural landscape of the United States of America and includes two steps.
-First, select a photo that you have personally taken that you think would represent the cultural landscape of the United States to someone in another country who has never been here. (Include the photo in your submitted document.).
-Second, describe how the photo reflects the cultural practices, values, traditions, and belief systems here in the United States.
2. Geographers use the total fertility rate (TFR) to measure the number of births in a society. The TFR is the average number of children a woman will have throughout her childbearing years (roughly ages 15 through 49). Answer the following questions related to your population geography.
1. What is the TFR of your mother? How does that figure compare with those of your grandmothers?
2. How many children do you expect to have? Is that number more, less, or the same as your mother? How confident are you in your answer? What factors make you feel confident or unsure of your answer?
3. The TFR in the United States is currently 1.8 (2016). How does your expected TFR compare with the overall U.S. figure?
4. A TFR of 1.8 in the U.S. means that the number of births is not sufficient to maintain the current size of the U.S. population. Yet, the U.S. population is actually increasing by 0.4 percent per year. What accounts for the increasing population, if not the number of births?
3. Debate it: Can Earth’s resources support our growing population?
1. Describe arguments for “no.” (Malthusians)
2. Describe arguments for “yes.” (critics of Malthusians including Ester Boserup)
3. Explain your position and why you chose that position.
4. What are five slang terms you and your friends use regularly?
a. List them and trace the roots of their development.
1. Think:
o Are they from movies, music, and pop culture?
o Are they foreign words that people from different backgrounds are sharing?
o Did you read this word in social media, a news article, or book?
o How does your own community of friends embrace new words &change language in the process?
5. Gender is a social construct, and Western culture starts to impose its values before we are born, even in the way we decorate nurseries for babies.
1. What has been your own experience?
2. Do you generally choose gifts for children based on the child?
3. In particular, since children recognize their gender as early as two or three years of age, how does it affect a child who does not self-identify within the male-female concept of gender?
6. Describe some examples in the local cultural landscape (or Texas broadly) that represent different ethnicities. For example: Does your community have a Little Italy, a Chinatown, or maybe a Koreatown or maybe a Germantown?
1.
1. Make connections to patterns of in-migration. How and when did these folks get there?