Multitasking: Man vs. Woman

Ousman Kamara 10/6/14

ENG:99

Multitasking: Man vs. Woman

While reading the article ‘Are women really better at multitasking?’ it was declared by British researchers that women are in fact better at multitasking than men are. In an experiment 50 male students and 50 female students were assembled to perform three tasks in a span of 8 minutes. According to the author 70 percent of the women performed better than their male counterpart. The experiment did show that women do take a look at things more logically but that does not mean that they performed better on all the tasks. The author does state that there is evidence showing that multitasking is hard on productivity for every person despite their gender.

The thing that i found interesting is that the men handled the math problems without many problems and also on pinpointing map locations but the woman did well on the most complicated task. This proves that women are better at multitasking, but depending on the tasks given whether its simple math problems or something confusing like making plans to find a key either gender can do a single task better than the other. I feel that neither gender is better than the other.

In response to the article i don’t agree with the statement that women are better at multitasking, but i also don't think men are better either. I recall at one point me and my friends were at a restaurant and we saw how the waiter and waitress were juggling their roles from taking orders, to delivering the food and cleaning. I noticed that both had shared the same task while woman were more organized from the way took the orders but when it came to bringing the food the males were more productive. This show that given the same tasks either one can do good regardless of gender.         

While i was reading that article i found evidence stated by Dr.Etienne Koechin in which she said that multitasking is a drag on everybody despite their gender. I found out that when an individual is working on one task the brain focus only on completing the task, but when working on two tasks the divides its focus and splits the work up between the left and right hemisphere of the brain. I remember a friend of mine was working on two separate class projects. While i advised her to work on them individually she decided to work on both at the same time. In the end she ended up getting low scores on both the projects.This shows that gender does not play a role in whether someone is better at multitasking than another.

To sum up my response to the article no gender is better at multitasking. While woman appear to be better at it it all comes down to the individual, meaning men can be better at multitasking to whether it be at a restaurant setting or any other place, everyone is different . But regardless whether a man or woman is better at multitasking, multitasking is a drag on everybody.      

Changing the Screening Process

Ousman Kamara 9/29/14

ENG099

While reading “Administration to Seek Balance in Airport Screening,” Scott Shane states that the Obama administration is caught between objection of airport screening and new terror attacks on airplanes, but they are insisting that the actions they take are justified by the risks. According to Shane, if a body scanner spots something suspicious on a scan, or if a passenger decides not to participate in the scan they must undergo a physical search which passenger's have found intrusive. According to Shane both James Carafano a security specialist and Bruce Hoffman, a specialist on terrorism stated that they would offer counsel to the administration to reconsider screening procedures. James Carafano suggest restricting the body scans and pat-downs to travelers who raise suspicions would be more practical, while Bruce Hoffman suggests the administration move away from adding more layers of security for every passenger and consider an Israeli-style approach to identify passenger who pose a specific threat.