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      The aforementioned examples represent two opposite perspectives toward homeless people. Brenda Comb’s story illustrates the stereotyped homeless people. Combs grew up in an educated family which both of her parents worked hard to provide her college education. Although Combs attended University of Arizona, she quit school and got involved in drugs due to the influence of her boyfriend. She then was arrested for the crimes she committed. Fortunately, a lawyer bailed her out and married her; her life seemingly turned brighter all of a sudden. However, she struggled in her new life because of the stress and the drug relapse, gave up her the new lifestyle and went back to be homeless. Combs realized this is that the way she wanted her life to be after her homeless experiences. She went up a probation officer and started her new life again in a rehab. Afterwards, a charter school offered Combs a job where she refreshed her life by focusing on her career. She decided to go back to school to pursue her education and received a PhD degree with a full scholarship from University of Grand Canyon.

 

 

 

Well-rounded Perspective

        Brenda Comb’s story relates to the common conception of homeless people – drug addiction, whereas David Raether’s counter story in which he underwent his homeless experience without any drug addiction. Moreover, he worked on the solution for his career obstacle while being a homeless person on the street. Raether became a homeless person because of his unsuccessful results after he returned to his career from a two years recharge with his family. Before he took two years off, David Raether was working as a comedy writer in Hollywood. He could afford his family to live in a five bedroom house in San Marino with his earning of $650,000 before his business went south. As a reseult of being a hard working comedy writer, Raether wasn’t able to spend enough time with his family and that’s when he decided to quit his job for two years and simply enjoy leisure time with the family. Two years after, he was unable to return to his field because of the dramatic change in demand. Consequently, he unwillingly refinanced the house and had his children and wife with his friends while Raether himself lived on the street without self-esteem. Upon his experience of being homeless, he came to acknowledge the importance of being brave and resourceful. Raether searched for job opportunities on Craigslist Writing Gigs while writing a Memoir called, “Tell me, Something She Said.” Additionally, he set up a website to share his struggles, which tipped over the stereotyped perspective toward homeless people. 

          Often times in reality, we are not always exposed to well-rounded information that enriches our perspectives toward a particular subject such as homeless people's situation, which gradually creates a narrow-mindedness and single-sided story. A single-sided story will limit our understanding toward a subject - the marginalized groups of people. Consequently, we might misunderstand marginalized groups' situations and not be able to support the marginalized groups with the necessities they demand.

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