ENGL 147N Week 3 Assignment; Guided Annotated Bibliography; Reading Critically and Practicing Summary, Paraphrase, and Quotation

Guided Annotated Bibliography Student Name English 147N Professor Berardi January 24th Thesis: Working long hours consistently overtime will result in a person’s well-being and mental health to become negatively impacted due to many different factors. Bixby, S. (2014, November 19). What Working Long Hours Actually Does to Your Body. Mic. https://www.mic.com/articles/104550/what-working-long-hours-actually-does-to-yourbody. Summary: The article, What Working Long Hours Actually Does to Your Body, focuses on the possible negative outcomes a person may experience due to prolonged work hours. Scott Bixby, the author of the article, decided to focus in on different reasons ranging from everyday downsides of long hours to long term negative health effects. Although, I do agree with most of the reasonings he focused on, there were some that could have been studied further, seeing as they lack the proper evidence behind the ideal. I will be speaking about and summarizing two different reasonings Bixby focused on that I agree with and disagree with. Supporting Point 1: One of the ideals Bixby spoke about that I agreed with was that working prolonged hours is “stressing us out”. I have personal experience working prolonged hours at my job, and I can easily agree that it can make just about anyone become stressed out to some extent. The real question is: How common is it for others to experience stress in their workplace? As stated in the article, “According to the Attitudes in the American Workplace VII survey, 80% of workers feel stress on the job, and 25% have felt like screaming or shouting because of job stress…” (Bixby, 2014). From this quote alone we can see how common it is for workers to experience prolonged stress; if 80% are experiencing stress, that means only 20% of workers do not experience stress on the job. On top of stress being common in the workplace, the more amount of stress you experience also has another effect on the human body. Prolonged stress in the workplace can lead to health effects that could make it difficult to live a peaceful everyday life. As stated in the article, “According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Perpetual stress “increases the rate of wear and tear to biological systems,” contributing to back and muscle pain, headaches and exhaustion” (Bixby, 2014). I know what you are thinking: Headaches? Exhaustion? Muscle Pain? Those are some minor effects to stress and lack any severity at all. That is just the thing, stress may have minor long- or short-term effects, but these minor effects can include all different kinds of severity levels from one day to the next; not to mention, imagine trying to do your job properly while your back is “killing” you, your head is pounding, and you are beyond tired. These quotes should be enough to agree with Bixby’s reasoning that working prolonged hours has a negative effect on our health by causing stress. Supporting Point 2: An ideal that Bixby spoke about that I had trouble agreeing with was that prolonged work hours “break your heart”. The heading alone, “it’s breaking your heart” caused me to not agree with what he was about to say. Bixby spoke about different research that explained how working long hours, especially long hours at a sitting job could cause heart problems. As stated by the article, “Research has shown that those who spend four or more hours sitting per day have a 125% increase in heart disease risk, and a 50% increased risk of death from any cause” (Bixby, 2014). When first reading this section of the article, I was surprised, I never had any thought that working prolonged hours could eventually result in something as serious as death. After rereading the section, a second time, a few things stood out to me. Even if there is evidence out there that proved that sitting for four or more hours could cause heart problems, the evidence he used is not credible. As I have learned over the years, no evidence can be credible if it is not expressed correctly. Therefore stating, “Research has shown” and not explaining or giving the name of the research/study where you found the information makes what you are speaking about less credible, even if the statement turns out to be true. From that alone, I knew that I was unsure about this part of his article and if what he was saying was true or credible. Not to mention, I find it difficult to believe that sitting for four or more hours a day increases heart disease risk by 125%. To me, 125% seems unlikely and I would find it more persuasive to believe a percentage less than 100%. Concluding Statement: Bixby’s article brought new ideals to life of the possible effects to working prolonged hours. He focused in on almost six different ideals that could be used as possible reasons, although I found some of these ideals to be slightly or completely uncredible. Overall, from this article I am now more aware of the effects prolonged working hours could have on a person and certain things to watch out for myself while I may continue to work longer hours myself. Justification: This source can be used to support my thesis by providing evidence to further my thesis, which states that prolonged work hours can negative effects on the health of workers. I want to focus on different effects of prolonged work hours like stress, depression and a few others. This article provided some credible evidence to those aspects which I feel will aid me in my eventual completion of this paper. Credibility: This is a partially credible source. I know what you are thinking, this source is either considered to be credible or not credible. Overa