Essay#1: Peer Draft

Shin Shan Cho

08 February 2018

English 105

Professor Dan

When A Path Appears, Opportunities Follow

In the book “A Path Appears” by the winning journalist Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn wrote about creating chances to deliver opportunities to change for better. The book was published in September 23, 2014. The first thing I progress before I read the book, I looked the summary from the back and the author’s background for better understanding. The introduction of Path Appears, grabbed my attention because there has little short stories about people who made it change and impact on themselves or for the community. The way I annotate for the novel, I used the sticky notecards to write the main points or supporting points. Moreover, I wrote the short summary of the stories at the end of the chapter. I have read up to Chapter 4, the authors keep continuing telling us the different stories about turning into the biggest positive changes in the end. Although this book has many stories about higher education however, the main central theme is encouraging people to make a difference in the world or in their community.

In Chapter 4 “ The Land of Opportunity- If you Catch Them Early” talks about we can create the differences of the child’s life by interacting with them appropriately with nurses and parents in early childhood. If parent desires their children to have a better life, both parents required to take action to influence them in their early days.  For example, the story about Professor David Olds, who invented the program of Nurse - Family Partnership, for children to have a better future life by training them at their beginning of their childhood. The author stated that "If we miss that opportunity at the front end, it can be far more difficult and costly to try to undo the damage later"(66). According to the authors, Kristof and WuDunn was trying to say, the opportunity for the kids is based on their parent how they interact with them in their early childhood. This story talks about parents can make a difference to their child life and higher education in their future.

The founder of this program, Olds believes that parents who wait for their children until the age of four to send to preschool are wrong. The reason is why because there is no differences which lead to drop out school early and will not be succeed in the future. For example, the author restates what David Olds said “Olds was blunt: I don’t think this program makes a difference, and we won’t know with available data. But I think we can design an intervention that will make a difference and that can be evaluated so we’ll know whether it works” (62). In this quote, Olds claims that his invention of sending nurses to child’s parents home as regular basis to check up can make the differences for child’s future.Therefore, in the end of the chapter 4, I annotated that David Olds can change differences not only for children’s higher education and also their lives.

In the introduction from Path Appears, Rachel Beck who is only nine years old started to raise money to help build a well through charity: water. She believed that water is one of the essential commodity in human life and people world wide lacking clean water. After her ninth birthday, unfortunately she confronted to the bad situation in a car accident with her family. Her aim was to raise three hundred dollars to help the charity: water. However, people started to donate money through the charity: water website which raised up to ten thousand dollars in the end. In the Marie Forleo’s interview with Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, WuDunn claims “That hope is like a path in the country: At first there is nothing and then because people walk this walk this way again and again, a path appears”. Based on this quote, WuDunn stated that first there was no fund for the charity: water which means there was nothing unless Rachel aimed to raise 300 dollars for her birthday. Even though she couldn’t raise 300 dollars on her birthday, afterward people started to take that path to donate money. In the end, Rachel can raise up to ten thousand dollars. Thus, I concluded by annotating that Rachel made a difference in improving health and created the opportunity to feel a hope in her community.

The main theme of “Path Appear” is creating opportunity to make differences in higher education and better health by telling us stories.