Batter: A Creative Writing Portfolio

My capstone project, Batter, is a collection of creative writing pieces, consisting of short stories, flash fiction, and two creative nonfiction essays. I decided to do a portfolio because creative writing is simply what I enjoy the most and have been intrigued by since I took my first fiction writing class at Kennesaw State University. Composing stories, imagining how characters could behave believably, their problems and their solutions, all of it combined gives me a sense of creative determination that I have not found in any other area of work or craft. I believe I’ve been rather lucky because working on most of these stories almost felt like no work at all. When I’ve produced a story that I believe in, that is when I know I’ve composed most diligently, regardless of if it were difficult to construct or not. What I aim to portray from this portfolio is strong writing, believable characters, stories that are simple but share a large, perhaps personal truth that we can all relate to. My advisors, Dr. Andrew Plattner and Dr. Bill Rice, steadily and patiently worked with me to revise and polish the fiction and non-fiction pieces presented in this capstone. My project was originally created to be a portfolio of my best creative work so that I may use it to apply for creative writing PhD applications. However, it is now a gentle yet nudging reminder that my writing is never actually done and never really perfect. This realization, perhaps from some literary spell or curse, I can’t determine which, only pushes me to write more

The Impact of Stress on Resilience: Examining the Moderated Effects of a Savoring Intervention

Resilience is characterized by the ability to bounce back from stress (Bonanno, 2004; Ong et al., 2006; Smith et al., 2008). Research suggests resilience is a personal resource that helps individuals effectively cope with stress and provides protection from negative outcomes (Loh, Schutte, & Thorsteinsson, 2013). Exposure to stress is a prerequisite to building resilience across many different contexts (Graber et al., 2015; Hennessey & Levine, 1979; Rutter, 2006). Interestingly, a high accumulation of stress detracts from an individual’s abilities to build resilience (Ong et al., 2006; Tuguade & Frederickson, 2007). However, it is unknown what types of interventions explicitly lead to increases in resilience, especially in the face of stress. Positive emotions are associated with resilience, however the mechanisms by which positive emotions boost resilience remain unclear (Folkman, 2008; Tuguade & Frederickson, 2007). One possibility is that savoring, an individual’s ability to generate, sustain, and extend positive emotions, may play an important role in building resilience, especially after experiencing a stressor (Bryant & Veroff, 2007). Thus, the current study’s primary purpose was to experimentally examine whether a savoring intervention could buffer the effects of stress on resilience. One hundred and eighteen undergraduate students participated in the study, and valid data were collected from 84 individuals. Participants were randomly assigned to an induction task (stress induction vs. neutral induction) and an intervention task (savoring vs. control). A 2 (induction task) x 2 (intervention task) x 2 (time) mixed ANOVA was used to analyze the data. Results revealed a non-significant main effect for induction task and intervention task on resilience scores. Results also highlighted a non-significant interaction effect for resilience scores. These findings are inconsistent with my hypotheses. Additionally, these results call into the question the efficacy of different positive psychological theories in buffering the effects of stress on resilience

Effectiveness of school-based exercise programs on childhood obesity

Childhood obesity has increased over the past four decades. It is crucial for officials to increase awareness and implement a course of action regarding this issue. There are several complications that arise from childhood obesity including hypertension, type 2 diabetes mellitus, liver disease, reproductive conditions, heart disease, mood disorders, cancer, dyslipidemia; childhood obesity often results in obesity throughout adulthood. Children spend a substantial amount of time at school, therefore, schools become an ideal place to establish interventions to combat the health concern. A study was conducted and proved to be effective at decreasing body mass index (BMI) in school-aged children, while increasing fitness levels through physical education and recess activities. Improved cardiovascular health and wellness knowledge was accomplished over one school year after implementing the program. School is an ideal setting for physical activity programs as it is compulsory for children to attend, staff members possess the knowledge and ability to deliver effective interventions, and structure is in place to allow the time for physical activity to occur

Gender’s Wider Stakes: Lay Attitudes to Legal Gender Reform

The Future of Legal Gender (FLaG) project is interested in examining the implications, for a wide range of stakeholders, of changing how legal sex/gender is regulated in England and Wales. In this article, we explore the views of ‘the wider public’ as manifest in responses to our ‘Attitudes to Gender’ survey (n=3,101), which ran in October to December 2018. Generally, respondents were invested in the status quo regarding a binary two-sex registration of gender close to birth. We discuss this finding with reference to cisgenderism and endosexism, focusing particularly on being critical of ‘gender’ and foregrounding biological sex, and views for and against self-identifying gender. In tandem, we also provide a critical commentary on the methodological positives and pitfalls associated with online survey research on a ‘topical’ issue. We suggest that cisgenderism could provide a less individualised framework for understanding different people’s hopes and worries with regard to both the current legal gender framework, and the possibility of reform.    &nbsp

From futures markets to the farm-gate

This article contributes to the debate on commodity price transmission and offers an alternative perspective of price formation, transmission and the producer price experience in low-income countries. By investigating the case study of coffee chains, originating in Tanzania the paper demonstrates how the joint forces of global financialisation and domestic liberalisation in producing countries have acted to reorganize coffee chains into structures in which certain chain actors have become increasingly vulnerable to violent price swings while others have managed to remain relatively cushioned from such movements

“I Don’t Think That’s Something I’ve Ever Thought About Really Before”: A Thematic Discursive Analysis of Lay People’s Talk about Legal Gender

© The Author(s) 2023. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, to view a copy of the license, see: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article examines three divergent constructions about the salience of legal gender in lay people’s everyday lives and readiness to decertify gender. In our interviews (and survey data), generally participants minimised the importance of legal gender. The central argument in this article is that feminist socio-legal scholars applying legal consciousness studies to legal reform topics should find scrutinizing the construction of interview talk useful. We illustrate this argument by adapting and applying Ewick and Silbey’s (1998) ‘The Common Place of Law: Stories from Everyday Life', ‘before’, ‘with’ and ‘against’ typology to interview talk about legal gender, and critique their cognitivist approach by offering a constructionist alternative. In our analysis, we offer a detailed discursive explication of three key legal consciousness themes. These themes offer a balanced representation of a dataset problematically ‘skewed’ towards sex-based rights feminist perspectives, namely that ‘before’ legal gender is an anti-decertification account, decertification would be risky for natal females; a ‘with’ legal gender construction is neither for nor against decertification per se, though the impact of decertification is produced in accounts as limited and unimportant; and ‘against’ legal gender is a pro-decertification classification, as not abolished legal gender is constructed as harmful to already marginalised groups. In concluding, we explore the reasoning for the lack of readiness for decertification currently, and return to the value of examining the construction of lay discourse about legal matters as talk is a form of social action. We suggest that applying discursive analysis to themes in legal consciousness studies enables a refocusing on the how rather than purely the what of divergent legal consciousnesses, and that this approach is a fruitful addition to feminist socio-legal studies.Peer reviewe