Greta Jennison's E-portfolio

Greta Jennison

Professor Farley

ENG-110-H10

November 12, 2024

The Importance of Empathy 

Empathy is all around us. It can be found in the hearts of our loved ones and in the selfless souls of strangers’ random acts of kindness. Humans as a species are very social organisms, for we rely on human interaction to thrive in life. We also face many conflicts and upsets throughout the course of our lives and we almost always find ourselves turning to others to comfort us. Empathy is arguably one of the best ways to show kindness and compassion in life. Empathy isn’t only comforting someone when they need it most, it is also as simple as being present in the world when interacting with others. Giving someone your undivided attention can be one of the most meaningful things. This is how we show our true respect for each other and take advantage of the world around us.

Sherry Turkle, sociologist, psychologist, and author, describes “practicing the empathetic arts” as “Learning to make eye-contact, to listen, and to attend to others.” Although these attributes may seem too simple to matter, they really do make a difference during interactions with others. Turtkle also examines the inner-workings of Holbrook Middle School where the teachers have noticed an extreme disconnect between students and an astounding amount of concerning tendencies relating to student to student interactions. The dean of the middle school reported to Turlke “Students don’t seem to be making friendships as before. They make acquaintances, but their connections seem superficial.” These concerns are extremely frightening for our future society because we rely on conversation, interactions, and human connection to thrive as communities. Turkle explains that this new era of technology is an explanation for this social dilemma and we have just watched as “Children became lost in games and forgot about the people around them, preferring, at long stretches, the worlds in the machine.” This problem with children and technology is something our world needs to navigate without the solution being fully removing technology from students. Our world relies so heavily on computers and other screen devices that it is important that students be exposed to this technology, but there needs to be a limit. Children should still grow up learning how to practice empathy through present communication and listening skills, rather than just stare at a screen all day. There is a balance that school systems need to find in order to produce well rounded humans, not just emotionless robots. But unfortunately, it isn’t just students that are facing this disconnect, adults are also to blame for being sucked into the online world in situations where they should be present in reality. We are in the midst of a social disconnect epidemic where our once very social species have begun transforming into antisocial robots, and the only way out is to practice empathy.

My personal ideas of empathy align very much with Turkle. I believe that showing empathy by being fully present during interactions is how we show our respect for each other, our thoughts, and our feelings. We have the opportunity to practice active listening and showing compassion for others everyday, and it is imperative that we seize these opportunities to build connections with others. Whether it’s as simple as putting your phone down while talking with a friend or giving a professor your full attention in class, we are capable of these crucial interactions. Turkle offers the advice that if we become “Fully present to one another, we learn to listen. It’s where we develop the capacity for empathy.” I wholly agree with this statement and believe that empathy is born from being present with each other, which ultimately results in deeper connections and more thoughtful conversation. These values align with the writing of Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point. Gladwell explains how important human connection is by using the phrase “strong ties and weak ties”. He identifies strong ties as close personal relationships and expresses that change happens when strong ties are formed. Gladwell believes that having strong in-person connections are extremely important to our society and this is the key to making change happen. 

Works Cited

Turkle, Sherry. EMPATHY DIARIES : A Memoir. S.L., Penguin Books, 2022.‌

Gladwell, Malcolm. The Tipping Point : How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. 2000. London, Abacus, 2000.‌

My writing often goes through multiple versions before I am satisfied with my finished work. Rereading my work and editing along with peer feedback is how I produce thorough and informative essays. Most commonly, feedback from my peers and instructor contains a pattern of the same things that need fixing. Some parts of my writing that usually needs more work after the first draft is the amount of evidence from the text I have included, specific language that could be replaced with better wording, some organizational reworking, and making sure my thesis is clear. I also have struggled with my grammar and punctuation in my previous writing, and original drafts. I have worked very hard to submit work with productive evidence that relates to my main idea. I have also worked on the structure of my writing and ensuring that each paragraph contains the right amount of evidence, context, and my own ideas. Additionally, feedback I have received has also included rephrasing sentences to allow my paper to read smoother. This correlates with the grammar and word choice elements as well because I sometimes find myself attempting to use big fancy words in the place of a simple word that would work much better within my writing and not create confusion. When I am able to successfully incorporate all of these elements and corrections into a polished writing piece, my writing is persuasive and fluid. 

In my writing I use MLA or the Modern Language Association formatting. Throughout the assignments I have completed in English 110 I have practiced using MLA format writing, in-text citations, works cited pages, summarizing of readings, and quotes from the text to support my writing. In project 3, I used five quotes from The Empathy Diaries: A Memoir, by Sherry Turkle. This excerpt from my significant writing project shows my ability to use and give context for a quote from the text: “Sherry Turkle, sociologist, psychologist, and author, describes “practicing the empathetic arts” as “Learning to make eye-contact, to listen, and to attend to others.”” I used this quote to explain how Turkle defines the practice of empathy. Including quotes is essential to productive writing because without using direct evidence from the text I would be unable to support my thesis and fully prove my point.

There are many common errors that I find myself committing and find in my peer’s writing. Oftentimes, when I re-read my writing before submitting I find unfinished sentences like “This quote is significant because…”. When I am writing essays I prefer to write as much as I can and then go back and add or tweak my writing, but unfortunately this sometimes leads to abandoned unfinished sentences that somehow snook by my previous editing. This can be as dramatic as missing an entire end of a sentence or as simple as a missing adjective that I was waiting on completing so I could find the perfect word. Another habitual mistake that riddles mine and my peer’s first drafts is a lack of quotes and actual evidence from the text. For me, finding quotes that accurately relate to my thesis is one of the hardest parts of an essay. Evidence from the text is essential to the soundness of my writing and a crucial part of proving a thesis, but more often than not my writing has lacked enough evidence from the text to support my claim. This miscalculation has been an ongoing struggle through much of my work, usually in the first draft. Lastly, I have noticed that it is extremely easy to overlook the simple details of writing due to the fact that we are focusing on more complicated writing now. Simple flaws include mispunctuation, spelling errors, formatting issues, missing page numbers, and more. These seemingly basic steps of writing can easily be overlooked when we focus on the more complicated parts over foundational writing skills.