Letter From Home an essay written by Kiese Laymon was a topic we discussed in Composition II, this essay stood out to me because it not only portrayed topics of systemic racism in our society, but also how pre-conditioning and the system can tear a person down. The essay discusses Laymon figuring out he had cancer and how it impacted his mental state and actions in future events, it further goes into depth about his experience in a racial based incident that he experienced and how it affected him. I believe this connects to a paper I read in ethnographic, that revolved around the treatment of workers and how we are systematically conditioned for certain mindsets early on because both papers convey how we are being conditioned in some sense. In Letter from home Kiese speaks about his home training which I believe to be a type of pre-conditioning that is developed throughout youth. It creates a mindset in the youth’s mind of how to interact with others in the real world and sets certain precedents in their minds. Which connects to ethnographic when discussing how we are pre-conditioned to believe that college, or a degree more broadly will open up magical doors to good paying jobs that will have us living comfortably. We discussed how education is repeatedly taught to us by parents and school systems to yield good paying jobs and that they put us in the best possible position when in reality, most early graduate students struggle to find good paying jobs soon after graduation, or they find jobs that don’t pay what they expected to receive. Overall, these two topics connect very well with each other by showing a first-hand experience of home training (pre-conditioning) in letter from home and a more expanded view of pre-conditioning in the article read in ethnographic.