motivation (3V)

Motivation is a drive that all people need in order to complete a task. Motivation varies just as tasks vary. If I had to put a word to describe the different levels of motivation it would be severity. If someone is starving and needs to get food, their motivations are very sever because their situation is severe. So their intrinsic motivation is very high. If someone asked them to do a worthless assignment they would have no motivation because the situation doesn’t call for it. Extrinsic motivation on the other hand is very temporary. If you pay someone to do something they will do it once. But after a while they will grow tired and not want to do that task any more.

In chemistry I learned the difference between chemical and physical changes.

Physical change is a change of form. When water melts or evaporates, or when you mold clay into a certain change.

Chemical change is when you change the atoms. When iron rusts or coal is burned.

Cuts and bruises (3A)

When I was young my father taught me a valuable lesson. And that lesson is that “there is no good without bad.” What he meant at the time is that without having a bad day, you can’t have a good one. From all I can tell he was exactly right. But he was right in other tenses of the phrase as well. You can look at everything, every situation, in two lights. In most cases when something bad happens people only see the downside. Like one time when I was a kid and I fell off my bike and scraped my knee. This is a situation almost everyone has encountered during their childhood. When this happens almost all people cry or go to mom for a band aid and a kiss to heal their scrap. However this lesson is a blessing in disguise. If we don’t fall off our bike as children we won’t learn that balance is necessary to ride a bike. Shakespeare meant that all situations are neutral at the start. He means that perception of situations is the only thing that matters.

When we fall off our bikes as immature children we see it as a bad situation. We have physical pain, but when we are older we see it as a blessing. It not only desensitized us to pain a little bit more but we also see it as a metaphor. When your training wheels are taken off your bike it is the same thing as going to college. Just as the two training wheels stopped us from falling, our parents stopped us from failing. But now it’s our turn to learn to balance. Not balance our weight on a bike but balance our time in a day. We will get scraped and cut at first, but in the end we will be smarter more independent people then we were before.

TV's flow (3B)

Everyone I've ever met has watched TV. And the vast majority of people watch it on a regular basis. Some watch the news to know what’s going on in the world. Others watch it for the weather, and some watch it for the entertainment. Now everyone has their reasons for watching it but when I watch TV I lose myself. It’s an escape from the rest of the world. When I’m under a lot of stress, I will on most occasions just sit down watch an episode of a show and just forget all my worries. This is when I get into my state of full relaxation. While it doesn't take much energy to watch TV it does take concentration to not get “sucked in”. When you watch one good episode it’s hard not to want to see the next, but like all students I have work to do. So when I’m overwhelmed ill watch an episode of a good TV show and go into flow. Before long I've had a small break, and a chance to think of what I’m going to do to accomplish my tasks at hand.

Some might say that TV is too passive of an activity to really require a state of flow. But what is flow really? Flow to me is when you are so immensely concentrated on something all other troubles vanish from your mind. All stress is gone from you and you can stay calm for a bit. To me the most important thing in life is to maintain a balance of all modes of thought and emotions. I think the best life will have just as much work done as fun had. Just as much stress as we do relaxation. And to accomplish this we need to set aside times to do certain things. Find what relaxes you and do that for every hour you work. This way you will live a life of prosperity but simultaneously a life of happiness, to have no regrets is life’s greatest possible accomplishment.

Back in high school everyone did their work differently, but for the most part those who were successful really only had to work hard. In high school you have a relatively rigged and set schedule. So all you needed to do was complete the work on time which is not hard. No assignments were really challenging or required much thought. In college however most of the learning is done on your own time as you have a much more fluid schedule. Instead of learning in class you learn on your own. Not only that but the questions posed are more complex, requiring more time to come to the correct conclusion. One article I thought summed this up well was the work hard or work smart article. It sums up the fact that in college you need to work hard and smart, not just hard. “Working Smart = Making a Plan… Working Hard = Working the Plan” (http://www.deliverfreedom.com/blog/work-hard-or-work-smart/) in high school it’s pretty much set in stone that you do your homework when you get home from school, in college you need to plan out when to do it during the week.

In high school I neither worked hard or smart. I did the requirements and after a test I forgot everything. In college I hope to perfect working hard and smart. I hope that I can keep up this method of accomplishing work for a long time after. It seems obvious and simple when you read it but no one ever thinks to put this technique in words and really think about it deeply. How to Become a Deep Thinker at College talks about how you need to take a variety of courses and spent extra time in order to become a deeper thinker, however I disagree with this. Deep thinking isn’t something you can just learn by taking numerous classes, it’s something you develop over a lifetime. Thinking deeply is a talent you more or less discover rather than learn. For example I can learn CPR (which I have) but in reality a teacher can’t just explain “do steps 1, 2, and 3 and you’ll be a great deep thinker”. People must discover deep thinking on their own or in other words there is no way to guide someone to think.

The Greeks (2I #9)

When I attended the involvement fair I was particularly interested in the Greek life. My brother went to UCONN and always spoke highly of his fraternity. He loved the parties but also the camaraderie of the organization. He said it was a lot of fun but also a motivator to do work, as his fraternity required a certain amount of study time in the library depending on your grades.

            I noticed two fraternities here at southern, one was Alpha Phi Delta and the other was Beta Mu Sigma. Since it is the beginning of the year they are rushing in order to get new members. For those of you that do not know what rushing is, it is a period of time where they have many open events and they try to get to know potential new members. If they like you and think you would be a good addition to the organization they will invite you to join. The next step is initiation, where they put you through a series of tests and activities. Upon finishing initiation you become a member of the organization.

Lead (2V)

Initiative is a relatively simple word to many. It is thinking of a solution to a problem and implementing the solution. I can simplify it even further than that by saying Initiative is going in and doing whatever’s necessary. Whether it’s leading a class discussion or saying hello to a new person. I have always been an initiator when needed. But sometimes I like to hang back, not because I don’t want to initiate, but because I want to see if someone else will get up and lead for a change.

In my chemistry class we went over more terms but two of the most important ones were as follows.

Homogeneous - this is when a mixture has the same proportions throughout the mixture. An example would be sugar water.

Heterogeneous – this is when a mixture has regions or layers to it. An example would be salad dressing.

Organization? not for me! (2B)

As long as I can remember I have been extremely disorganized. I remember that at the end of every year in high school I would pull a book out of my backpack and 20-30 papers would come out with it. I never had folders or binders to organize myself, as well as no place to put old papers away at home. Well, you see that’s what I told people, but in all honesty there were places to put papers and there were shelves to store useless old graded assignments. See when it comes to organization it’s not about the lack of resources, it’s about laziness. I always had the time and resources to be that perfectly organized student. But why clean your backpack when there’s the awesome TV to watch, or friends to hang out with? I always thought that it was useless. I did great in school despite the disorganization. I always had my homework done and never was missing a paper. Sure it might take me an hour or two to find “that paper” but it was there, somewhere in the endless pit of papers that was my backpack.

If you look at the backpack above, that level of disorganization doesn't even compare to my backpack in high school. I remember teachers AND CLASSMATES gasping at my backpack. They literally inhaled loudly at the sight of me opening it. People even made jokes about how my backpack was bigger than me! (I won’t lie, it kind of was.) But that’s beside the point, at the end of last year I made a vow to myself that I would be organized in college, and that my half of the dorm would be clean. That my papers would be on the proper shelves and that at the end of every day I would clean thoroughly to maintain this organization. So far I have kept to this vow. And I see no reason I cannot keep to it, however only time will tell if my willpower is stronger than that of the dreaded TVs.