Research Paper

The people that read my research paper initially said it was really boring or not captivating at all. That's totally understandable. I am one of the few people who actually is super interested in politics and current events... it feels like. But still, it was kinda discouraging to hear. I thought my essay was pretty awful from the beginning.

So going in to see Dr. Ballenger, I was incredibly surprised when he high-fived me and said my essay was a fascinating read.

I'm not sure how I feel about the situation. On one hand, my teacher thinks I did a good job. On the other, my peers think I am boring.

I think it just goes to show that writing is subjective a lot of the time. I don't really understand how people can like Jane Eyre.... seriously, it's awful. I guess what I am left wondering is what is good writing anyways?

Autumn Leaves

As I write this I am sitting outside of the Administration Building. The sun is shining, the temperature is perfect, and the leaves are falling.

Autumn in my favorite time of the year. Sure, flowers are beautiful and they make life look so exciting. However, autumn is my favorite because it makes death appear so inviting. As these leaves, which have all revealed their true colors, fall elegantly to the ground I can only think about how serene this picture is.

Perhaps is reminds me that there are times where I need to let go, where I need to fall gracefully with the knowledge that spring will come around again. Maybe its a natural reminder that the world, and my world, will work itself out eventually. Nature will come along for the ride and mess everything up, but the least I can do is fall elegantly.

And I don't have to fall with other people. I can fall at my own time, at my own rate. I can fall when I am done, when I cannot hang on anymore.

And then I can look forward to spring again.

Experimenting with Motivation

I have been feeling unmotivated lately. I have tried various things to renew to vigor I approached my high school assignments with. I have gotten to the point where I am completing assignments moments before they are due, and I realized this has to change. I am tired of mediocre assignments, because I know I am capable of so much more. In high school, I was always striving to be the best. My best work came out in projects, and when I turned them in, I reveled in the annoyance the other kids felt towards me because I had gone beyond the requirements of the assignment. While everyone else had neon poster boards full of cutouts and handwritten descriptions, I had a professional looking, printed Adobe poster. My teachers admired me, and that was all that mattered.

Now, it seems I just don't care anymore. Sure, it would be nice to be at the top of my class, but that would require work. I'd rather just laze around and do nothing. I've been struggling with this for the last few weeks especially.

So, I made a deal with myself. I will work hard every day to complete my work and do it well up until Thanksgiving break. I will give myself the weekends off as long as everything is done during the week. I will put a great effort into keeping my room clean. I will do all of this, and see how I feel over Thanksgiving break. If I have not seen a huge change in my outlook, the quality of my assignments, and my grades, I will say the experiment has failed and will go back to my old ways. I am certain that if I complete these requirements I am putting upon myself, I will not want to go back to the lazy, sloppy person that I am now, though.

I am posting this so that I have accountability. You all have read this now, so there's no turning back. I will work hard until Thanksgiving and then decide where to go from there. The experiment starts now!

Midterm Survey

The midterm survey got me thinking about one of my writing insecurities.  I've found that I preface many of my sentences with "I think" or "I believe" in order to give myself an easy out in case I'm wrong.  I finished writing an essay for a different class yesterday and I practiced overcoming this insecurity by reading over it again and deleting all those "I think" and "I believe" phrases.  I found that I liked the essay much more after I did that.  Here's one of the paragraphs from which I deleted all those phrases.

"Death is the great equalizer.  It comes to everyone.  As Marcus Aurelius said in his famous Meditations, “Death smiles at us all, all a man can do is smile back.” No amount of money, love, exercise, or medical expertise can keep it at bay for long, so I need to determine for whom or what I want to live my life.  Too often I choose to live in hazy denial instead of bravely resolving to fix my eyes on one truth, whatever or whoever that truth may be.  Studying other people’s truths, what they decided to live for, can help my truth become clearer. "

The College Learning Curve

Does anyone else feel something along the lines of being slammed into having to learn everything at once? For a lot of us, the past 10 weeks has been a balancing act, trying to manage schoolwork with the new experiences of living independently/on our own. I feel like it has taken me this long to truly figure out how to do my homework effectively and actually use the syllabus to help you study and plan.

Does anyone else feel like they missed out on little things like that? For example, I was completely oblivious to the fact that we had weekly reading in this class, until I looked at the syllabus schedule. Why did it take me a month to figure that out?

I would like to think that, maybe, it's because I am learning how to learn.

Today I attended a lecture given by Dr. Matt Sanders, author of the book Becoming a Learner, which we were all required to read in Honors 198. His book makes the distinction that we come to college to learn how to learn, and not just to gain technical skills and people skills.

Today, someone asked him how we were supposed to manage the learning curve we will hit after we all earn our undergraduate degrees. How we were supposed to prepare ourselves to learn so many different things and not become overwhelmed?
Dr. Sanders' response was fairly simply I suppose, but it really struck a chord in me, and I guess I feel the need to share it all with you.

Dr. Sanders replied by saying that it would be impossible to give every single new thing we had to learn the same amount of time. There are some things that we are naturally good at, and others that we are not so good at. What matters is not how much time we dedicate to the subject, but the attitude in which we approach the subject. He used the example of general education classes vs. classes directly involved with your major. He said that you will probably place more emphasis, and therefore more time, into the classes concerning your major. However, the small amount of time you dedicate to that general ed. class can be worth just as much as the time you dedicate to your major classes if you approach the class wanting to be a learner.

Being a learner is not learning everything at once, but rather I feel that it is the way your approach your learning and the improvements you can make to it.

Sure, it took me a month to realize that Dr. Ballenger had provided us with a weekly reading schedule that would supplement the material we were learning in class. However, learning this has made my knowledge within this class grow and expand. It has also helped me to plan and study my other subjects.

So the college learning curve may have provided a slight obstacle for me, but I know that each part of the curve I climb gets me one step closer to who I want to be.

Reflecting on college so far

It's amazing that we are already in the 10th week of school. Time has been flying by so fast that I haven't really gotten to pay attention to everything I've done so far. I've accomplished a lot, I've realized, and have been more productive in these 10 weeks than all of my senior year in college. Though I’m not talking about schoolwork, (my homework in college has actually lessened since high school) I mean the other little things that people rarely notice. 

First of all, I have become more independent than ever. After talking to my parents though, I have realized how much I don’t rely on them anymore, which is a huge difference to only a few months ago. I no longer call or see them because I need something, I do so because I want to. While this is a given from being in college, I have always been the type of person that felt like I was older than I was and couldn't possibly grow up anymore, but being in college has changed my perspective. I no longer feel older than I actually am, in fact I feel younger. I realize now that I still have a long way to go, and a lot of growing up to do.

People always say that you “find yourself” in college, and I always thought that was a cliché thing to say with little truth behind it. However, I’ve learned that there is in fact something behind this saying. I’ve only been in college for two and a half months and already I can see a difference. Things I thought I’ve always known about myself have been challenged and I am learning more about myself every day.

With just this, I already feel really accomplished. I wonder what will become of me farther down the road.

Take A Break!

For the past two and half months or so since I have been in Idaho for school I have rarely just taken a break. I can't seem to allow myself to not do homework for a day. I hate the feeling of "relaxing" when I know I could be doing school work instead. I don't know if anyone else feels this same way. I'm guessing you do since we are all honors students here. We all stress about school way more than we need to do. When I was in high school I would take lots of breaks. I usually would finish most of my homework doing the school week and not do any over the weekend. I think this worked a lot better than doing all of your homework during the school week and yet still finding some homework to do over the weekend like I do now. Now that I am in college I don't take breaks. I feel like if I'm not doing school work then I am doing something wrong because I thought college was supposed to be where you are constantly doing work. However, my grandparents came up from California to Idaho to visit me. I stayed in their spare bedroom of the bed and breakfast house they were staying at. It was amazing to get out of the dorm for the weekend. Plus, since I wanted to spend all of my time with my grandparents I didn't do any homework over the weekend. Of course at first I felt stressed out like I should be doing some type of homework even though I didn't have any. Later on in the weekend, though, I realized that I need to start relaxing and enjoy the time I have. After letting go of the feeling of anxiety from not doing work I felt relieved from my stress. Sometimes we all need to give ourselves a break from the hard work we do. Now that I had a great weekend away from school I feel refreshed and ready to get back to working hard in all of my classes. I realized that taking a break can actually make you more productive in the long run. Now that I feel refreshed I have a clear mind for school. So, take a break sometimes!!