Kat Response

Studying abroad is a great opportunity for many people, as it does help you learn a new language and develop new relationships, but is it really worth it for everyone? I say that it really depends. If you are going to major in a foreign language, then studying abroad in that country is definitely worth it because you will become exponentially more proficient in that language. I do not really get the point in only majoring in another language to begin with, as you can just as easily go and learn the language in the country and major in something else. This would be much more helpful in the job market, but this is an entirely different issue. If you are going to major in international business, then studying abroad is a really good thing to do, especially if you can get an internship while in another place. I am sure that I am missing some majors where studying abroad is incredibly beneficial, so I am sorry. But other than those two majors, studying abroad is not quite that beneficial for you. That being said, studying abroad from what I have heard is an incredibly amazing experience. There is a really big difference studying abroad being super helpful and being super cool. College is a time unlike any other where you can do things like studying abroad, so if you have to opportunity I would do it, but it may come with some consequences.

Hana Response

As a kid, I was never spanked. My parents were not the type to physically punish me, instead they opted to grounding me. If I did something wrong, I would get privileges taken away. These punishments ranged from no television for the day to being totally grounded for weeks on end, depending on the egregiousness of my acts. I was the type of kid that got grounded a lot; I was always doing something that merited a punishment. I wasn't a bad kid in the general sense of the phrase; I didn't get into fights or get bad grades. Instead of that, I would do one little thing wrong, and then dig myself into a deeper hole from there. For example, I would call my older sister a name, and lose television privileges. Then I would ignore my mom and continue to watch TV. I would then lose the TV for a week but keep ignoring my mother. The punishments would pile up, and the next thing that I knew I would be grounded for an entire month. It isn't that I didn't fear these punishments or think that they would not hold water, I just refused to think ahead to think about how these punishments would actually affect me in the future. Then after the interactions with my parents were all over, I would sit and think about how stupid I was being and regret my actions very soon after it was all over. Despite these emotions, the next time I would get in trouble, nothing changed. I never really learned how short-sighted that I was being. This still is a problem for me today, as I will still get into altercations with people of authority and lose horribly. This happens to me in soccer with referees, and used to happen with teachers in high school. I am working on it though, and I'm getting better.
As you can see, every type of punishment is going to come with some negative effects. Aversive conditioning can cause people to be cripplingly fearful of people with authority, while the ways that my parents punished me may have caused me to have not enough fear for authority figures. I think that the best way to condition children is to understand the child and simply know what they will respond to the best.

Athletes

The amount of money that athletes receive in sports is ludicrous. Millions of millions of dollars go into paying players to let them play a game, and the money keeps going up. The baseball example that Jack gave was a very good one, with people earning over thirty million dollars a year to pitch less than thirty games. These numbers are insane, and they are not exclusive to baseball either. In soccer, things are probably much worse. Based off of pure salary, the best baseball players make on average more than the best soccer players. For example, the world's best soccer player, Lionel Messi, makes 20 million euros per year, whereas the best baseball player makes 50% more than that per year. However, most of the money in soccer does not go players' salaries like in baseball. Unlike American sports, most soccer players do not get traded for someone else or go into free agency. Instead, they are transferred for cash. In other words, if one team wanted Messi, they would not trade a bunch of their own players for him, but would instead offer money to Messi's club, Barcelona. Every player in the world has a price tag, and these tags can be incredibly high numbers. The world record transfer happened last year, with Gareth Bale going to Real Madrid for, at the time, roughly $150 million dollars. That was only the money required to get his former club to sell him and does not include his $15 million salary. While this amount seems crazy, some players have even higher "buy-out clauses," or the amount of money required to terminate the player's contract to allow him to join another team. Cristiano Ronaldo has a rumored buy-out clause of $1 billion dollars. This number is incredibly high, but that is for a reason. It is an amount above that that any club would pay for him. This brings me to my point. Although the money that is thrown into sports is absolutely insane, this is really not an issue. The reason that there is so much money in sports is because people are willing to pay that much. It may seem unfair to people that were not born with these athletes' talent, but it isn't like these people are being forced to pay their own money to support these sports. They can either choose not to patronize them, or spend their own money supporting something that they like. Yes the amount of money is crazy, but it is simply a response to the demand from the fans and the supply of money that they have.