Proposal

Part 1: Proposal (Jake Stendel)

1. My program of study is Commerce, a subset of Social Science.
2. 1. The story of Jordan Belfort, written in an eye catching manner. I will give an anecdote about his monetary success, the ‘so-called’ greatness that came with it, and then lead to the damage he caused to others.
   2. Can someone be monetarily successful and empathetic to others? Can you be a good employer, AND a good person?
   3. People usually say ‘money can’t buy happiness’, but I think that the statement feels vague and nonsensical. ‘Will money make you kinder or crueler?’ I think is a more interesting take on conventional wisdom. 
3. As a small business owner, who mostly does contract work involving negotiations, I find it incredibly difficult to balance empathy and my own earnings. I wear two masks to every meeting, my own, personable mask to discuss my services, and my cold, unfeeling price negotiator. Is it possible to balance these personas?
4. I hope to learn about the causations and consequences of what makes someone monetarily ambitious, and how success in that ambition may make them less empathetic.
5. Money is freedom over others but a prison over oneself // When given money/power, is it human nature for people to abuse it? // Money is a self-centered yet never-ending goal // People with money can often belittle those who don’t have it, instead of helping them to attain it // Why do we feel so weird talking about money? // Can you be a good business person and a good human?
6. My feature story will fall mostly into the ‘self analyzation’ category, with a part of it falling into the ‘investigation’ domain. 
7. Overambitious Gen Y and Zers, people who are hungry for status/have something to prove. Hopefully I will bring the idea of a balance between being a business person and a human.
8. Hopefully help to humble people with anxiety over successful careers. Bring light to why people are so weird about money. 
9. The Washington Post: This article is talking about a similar topic to mine. This article is also a personal feature story, but due to its publication, it will likely be more professional and less colloquial than mine. 
10. I would like to focus on personal experience, while also dissecting why people are so awkward about money. There are different angles I feel like I can take with this paper. The Gen Y/Z overambition angle, an almost cautionary tale about losing yourself and your kindness in the pursuit of more. I can also do an older take, analysing different big businesses, and how the more a business grows, the more it neglects its employees. I can also look more universally, using my anecdotes as a microcosm for society’s money conundrum, our obsession, reliance and awkwardness around it. I think the most interesting take would have to do a smaller scale story, focusing on a more niche group of our population, making it more personal. I would like to take a look at the value a dollar can give someone, and determine whether it is correlation or causation that leads people with more money to be less empathetic.

^Note: Eye Catching Titles: ‘The lack of empathy in a dollar’ ‘I make more money than you’ ‘The Cash Conundrum”