Get Organized: A tribute to Aristotle

For this assignment I decided to clean up my room. Usually my room is a complete disaster. There are clothes , books, scraps of paper, and shoes everywhere. When I normally clean my room I just bunch things into a ball and kind of put them away or just stack things up. This time, however, I actually folded my clothes and put things where they belong instead of just stacking them up. I made all my sweatshirts made it where they are supposed to be. I put all of my shoes against the wall in a neat line. I put all of my books back in my bookshelf or in my backpack. Finally, I threw away all of the garbage and scraps of paper.

Before starting to clean my room I was a little hesitant because it was so messy. I thought that it would be really hard to actually a place for everything and put it away neatly. While cleaning my room I was kind of annoyed because it took awhile. I got annoyed at how much stuff I have that needed to be put away. In the end, I was really happy. I could actually see all of the the carpet on my floor. I could walk around my room without having to worry about stepping on something or tripping over it. Although I was hesitant and annoyed before and while I was cleaning, it really paid off in the end.

The project made my mind feel "cleaner." I feel like I just got rid of all of the junk in my mind as well as in my room. Seeing a clean room made my mind feel fresh. I didn't have to think as much about where I was walking or where things were. My things were where they should be and the floor was clear of obstacles. All in all, cleaning my room was kind of like cleaning my mind.

After the project I know that it isn't really that hard to clean my room. It may look like a very daunting task, but it really isn't that bad. I also know that I can keep my room clean so that it doesn't get messy. I realized that everything has a place in my room and if  I just put everything away after I'm done with it then it will save me time in the end. Overall, cleaning my room made me realize that keeping my room clean will benefit me in more than one way.

Change of Mind: Religion

Growing up and now, I have a very religious mom. My mom grew up right across the street from a church. She went to grammar school there and went to Resurrection High School, which, at the time, was an all girls catholic high school. Because of this background my mom raised my brother and I in a catholic household. Every Sunday we wake up at 8:30 and go to 9:30 mass. My brother and I went to Religious Education every Tuesday night from 1st-8th grade. We got our first communion, reconciliation, and got confirmed in the church.

This background would probably make most people really appreciate religion. It would probably make religion a large part of their lives. This, however, was not the case for me. All of this going to church when I thought I could have been doing better things with my time, really made me not appreciate anything that had to do with religion. I figured that I could be catching up on my sleep in my bed at home instead of pretty much sleeping through church every Sunday morning.

When we started talking about religion in class, I was like oh great... it's another "Sunday morning." However, the more we got talking about it the more I thought about it. I realized how much there is to religion. I realized that there is a lot more to religion than the priest standing up at the altar telling us what we should believe and how we should think. It's a philosophical process that was created thousands of years ago.

I've decided that I shouldn't judge religion as harshly. A lot of people put in a lot of hard work to create these things. Even if I don't believe in the things they do or say, I should still give them a chance. As much as I don't enjoy going to church on Sunday mornings, I should give it a chance because I might be looking at it the wrong way. If I think more about what the priest is saying at church I can probably get a lot more out of the experience. All in all, our discussion in class about religion in Sophie's World made me re-evaluate my attitude towards religion and church on Sunday mornings.

Change of Mind: Maya Lin Documentary

When we watched the Maya Lind Documentary in class it really made me think about some things differently. Before we watched it I figured that it was really easy to design memorials. I thought that the Government just picked someone to do it and they did it. I figured it was a really simple process that didn't take that long. I was very closed-minded on the subject.

After watching the movie I realize how much work actually goes into the memorials. I really appreciate the Vietnam Veterans memorial a lot more now. It's not that I didn't appreciate it before, but now that I have a deeper understanding of it, it really hits me on a deeper level. Now that I know how much work actually went in to creating the memorial it means a lot more to me. Now that I've seen how much work it actually took to create this I think I will appreciate a lot more things now. I think that I will look at things now and think about how much work went into creating them. I will have a more open-minded view of art and memorials.

Best of Today: Socratic Irony

I thought that the most interesting thing that we talked about in class today was Socratic Irony. I think that the way that Socrates learned was amazing. The fact that he was able to act dumber than he was and then learn from that was really interesting to me.

I think that if someone today were to "pull a Socrates" and go around a place like Daley Plaza and ask people questions would be seen of as a dumb person. If this person acted not as smart as they actually were people would also get annoyed with them. Today, people are too worried about being somewhere at a certain time and climbing the corporate ladder and making money. They don't take the time to "stop and smell the flowers." They need to take a break from their busy lives and just sit for a day and think about what life would be like if we didn't have everything that we have now. They should think about what it would be like to be Socrates in Ancient Greece acting dumber than he was, asking people questions.

I think that what Socrates did is a great way to learn. If you can observe how other people act you can learn about them. I think that, however, if I acted dumber than I was when I was in school in order to help me learn better it wouldn't get me very far. I  wouldn't be able to do well on tests or quizzes or even in-class discussions because I was acting dumber that I was in order to learn more about the society that we live in.

iMedia: 2012 by Jay Sean

2012 by Jay Sean  

If you turn the radio on today to B96 or 103.5, you will probably hear the song 2012 by Jay Sean. When you first listen to this song it sounds like most songs on the radio do. It has a heavy bass beat and sounds like it is just about drinking and partying like there's no tomorrow. Sadly, this represents what our society is like today. People think that every night they should go out and party. They shouldn't care about what else is going on in life. They think that their social life is the most important thing in the entire world. As a society, we think that this song describes what we should be like. 

When I first heard this song I liked it because of the bass and the way it sounded. After listening to it for awhile I wanted to look up the lyrics so that I could know them. After reading the lyrics I realized that this song could have a deeper meaning. When I read the lyrics for the first time I thought that it was really just about partying and drinking like there is no tomorrow. After reading them another time I realized that they could mean that you should live your life like there is no tomorrow. In the song Jay Sean says, "You know that it doesn't matter As long as we got each other." This is my favorite lyric in the song because it shows that no matter what as long as you have someone there for you, you can make it through anything in life. I think that the song 2012 by Jay Sean isn't just about partying like there's no tomorrow it's about living your life the way that you really want to.

Best of Week: Organizing Principle

This week in class we talked about organizing principles from The Shadow Catcher. We talked about how the organizing principle was the bracelet, the shadow catcher. On the board we saw how the bracelet connected almost all of the characters in the book. Although the way that they all connected was very complicated, it made sense. Having the idea of an organizing principle throughout the book really helped me understand the book better.

The bracelet made me think back over the entire book and connect everything in my head for myself. After I reconnected everything in my head I looked back at the drawing and saw that it was the same. The idea of an organizing principle helped me understand the novel a lot better. It, however, also confused me. The fact that Clara was not part of the "connectedness" of the book confused me. The author spent 150 pages allowing us to get into Clara's mind and then Clara ended up not being a major part of the book. I couldn't figure out why the author did that and that confused me even more.

I think that now when I am confused on things I will look for an organizing principle to figure things out. Organizing principles can really help me when I'm having a hard time figuring something out or even a hard time starting something. If I think of an organizing principle then I can work off of that and connect everything to that organizing principle. Overall, I think that organizing principles have been and will be very useful to me.

Metacognition: QE Essay

While writing the QE Essays I learned many things about the way I think. The first thing that I learned was that creativity was a lot harder to write about than I thought. I thought that it would be easy because creativity is something that I thought comes to most people naturally.What I thought was wrong. Creativity actually takes a lot of hard work, dedication, and trail and error. Because of this assumption i had made, i had a difficult time answering the question of how creativity could be used to help improve the human condition.This frustrated me while writing the essay because i thought that the answer would come to me right away. I soon realized that this was not the case. This, however, made me realize more about creativity which helped me write the essay.

Something that I learned about my thinking process while writing this essay was that I can get frustrated easily. This was not a bad thing for me. It made me think about what I was writing and revise it so that it was better. It also made me realize that I have a short attention span when it comes to writing essays. Something that surprised me about my thinking was that even though I had a short attention span writing it, it didn't take me that much to get myself working again.

There are some things that I would like to improve on while writing my next essay. I would like my thinking to be more focused while I'm writing it. I would also like to not get as frustrated as easily.Overall I think that these things an help me improve my essays in the long-run.

Blogging Around

This first blog I read was Julia's. In her blog she talk about Alan Alda's essay and how passionate Feynman was about his work. She talked about she wishes that she could be that passionate about things in her life. She also talked about how her classes and her job were allowing her to do this. This is what I said to her:

"Julia,

Reading this blog post, I totally agree! When we were talking about Alda in our group and how he only focused on what he liked to do, I thought about how cool that would be in my life. I then, like you, thought about my schedule this year and how I'm only taking classes that I really want to take. I also am not taking a language nor a science this year and am thankful because, like you those never really agreed with me. Also, I can relate to what you are talking about with Pigtails and Crewcuts because I have also worked there and that is genuine fun that would be amazing to have while working on school work. Overall, I found that our thought processes in reading the Alda essay were similar."

The second blog I read was Amy's. In her's she also talked about pursuing her interests. She, however took a more long distance approach to it. She talked about how in her future she didn't want to end up in a job where she didn't like what she was doing.  This is what I said to her:


"Amy!

I could not agree with you more on this post. I just read Julia's post about almost the same thing. It seems that the three of us all want to live our lives following our interests. I, like you, fear ending up in a dead end job where I dread going to work everyday. I want to work somewhere where I can wake up every morning and look forward to work. I also agree with you when you say that you are envious of the people who are doing what they love for a living. All in all, I thought that this was a super post that described my thoughts too."

Metacognition: QE essay

While writing the first section of my QE essay I discovered many things. The first thing that I discovered was my thought process. Before this I would usually just sit down and write my essay. I would then come back to it a few days later and reread it to make sure that it made sense. At that point I would rewrite or rearrange things in my essay so that it flowed better or made more sense. With this essay, I couldn't do that because we only had one day to do it. I had to focus my thinking a lot more when I was writing it so that I could be sure that it made sense. I realized that when I write I think in a stream of consciousness and it doesn't always make sense. I learned how to work through this and write an essay that makes sense.

Something that I like about my writing is that I can write fluidly even though my thought process is anything but that. I can take the random thoughts in my head and put them on paper like they make complete sense even though in my head they usually don't. This is also something I'd like to improve on. I want to improve my thinking process so that I don't have to worry about my thoughts making sense when I put them on paper.

Best of Week: How to Write a College Essay

This week in class we talked about how to write a good college essay. This really helped me because going into Thursday I wasn't all that sure how to write a good college essay. After reading examples in class and talking about what we need to do, I feel a lot more confident about my essays. This not only will help me in writing my college essays but essays in general. I feel that we discussed things that can be applied to every essay that we write and not just the college essays. It also made me think about the essays I had already started working on. I can now go back and edit them with confidence that I didn't have when I wrote them.

Connection: New Yorker Essays and Real Life

In class we talked about the New Yorker essays that were written approximately a week after the attacks hit and what the authors had right and wrong about the attacks. One of the authors, Susan Sontag, was the most "controversial" because she spoke, what I believe, is the truth about America. In her essay she says, "Let's by all means grieve together. But let's no be stupid together." Sontag is saying that Americans can grieve together but they shouldn't be stupid or nieve together.  She is saying that collectively as a nation we can be really stupid and think that nothing bad will happen to us and that this attack came totally unprovoked.  In reality it was not and because we are thick-headed Americans, we think that nothing bad could ever happen to us, that we are the greatest and that we could never do anything bad to another country or group of people.

I feel that in real life people tend to think that nothing bad could ever happen to them and that they could never do anything to provoke something bad happening to them. People, especially in the North Shore, live inside a "bubble." They think that life is perfect and that they will always have everything that they have in the North Shore. They don't realize that in a matter of seconds everything that they have could be gone. I feel that Susan Sontag was trying to tell us this in her essay on the September 11th attacks. She, generally speaking, said that Americans think that nothing bad could ever happen to them and if something does happen then everyone should stop what they are doing grieve together.  She says that this is wrong, that we should grieve together but we shouldn't be stupid together. She points out the things in real life that people don't realize that they are doing.

Carry it Forward: The Angels

In the poem "The Angels" by John Updike, Updike says that we shouldn't live life on a "plane of silent compromise." I want to make sure that I am not living my life on this plane. This plane of silent compromise is a plane where there isn't much going on in life. I want to live a life where I can view art of great artists and really truly appreciate it. Now I look at art and don't really think about all of the work that's put into in and the hidden meaning that there might be. I want to look at art and find that hidden meaning in it. I feel that if I do this then I can live a much fuller life not on the plane of silent compromise. Updike also lists great composers in his poem.  I want to listen to more of their music because classical music is one thing that I feel I don't listen to enough of. If I were to listen to more classical music I would not be on the plane of silent compromise any longer. All in all, I want to look at art to find a deeper meaning and listen to more classical music to make sure that I'm not living on the plane of silent compromise.