I’m pretty sure this week has given me whiplash. For starters, all classes for the rest of the semester (as far as I know) have been converted into online courses to avoid the spread of Coronavirus. As teachers and students alike scramble for their hand sanitizer and toilet paper in preparation for this upcoming month of utter chaos, I calmly sit in my room at my desk and patiently await for whatever this virus has to offer our mundane world. My entire opinion is that whatever it’s going to do, it needs to hurry up. If it’s going to kill us, kill us. If it’s going to fade away, so be it. But please hurry. I’m tired of hearing about it from right-wing religious zealots who stop me while I’m trying to pump gas. Seriously. Leave me alone. Also, I know this seems like it has nothing to do with the prompt for this week, but I have a point, I promise. Speaking of which, the prompt for this week:
After preparing presentation two, and witnessing your classmates presentations, what would you like to be your debate question? Why? Remember that the debate topic must be in the form of a question that has a debatable answer, rather than a statement of fact, and that the answer to that question must necessitate argument like a thesis statement.
Presentation two involved splitting the class into multiple groups and assigning each group 3 documentaries to watch. Then, we had to collaborate and present a topic based on our takeaway from the documentaries. My group was assigned docs ( I don’t feel like typing the whole word anymore) pertaining to medicine and pharmaceuticals: The Pharmacist, Take Your Pills, and Sicko. I’m not going to waste any more of my word count explaining the plots of these. They’re on Netflix (not Sicko though). Anyway, my group did our presentation on corruptions in the pharmaceutical industry, and as a prescribed ADHD patient, I thought I could bring more light onto the subject by debating a topic I understand on a personal level. As I’ve shown earlier, as well as in previous blogs, I have ADHD and my mind tends to wander when I write or type my thoughts down. I can never focus on a single task, and therefore my doctor prescribed Focalin to help my mind center on my schoolwork. The thing is, I barely told my doctor about my focus issues, only merely mentioning it during a checkup. Without hesitation, I was given a prescription for ADHD medicine. Now, she may have been able to tell based on mannerisms or how I acted and spoke, but it still raised the question, “do people, especially kids, get prescribed ADHD medicine too easily?” I couldn’t help but wonder this since then, and after seeing those documentaries and giving that presentation, I feel that this is the perfect time do delve into this topic and search for some answers.
The Alley Way 