Final Post

We only have three more classes left! I am so excited for this semester to be finished. It seems like this semester, I have always had something that I should have been doing. But there is a lot more to life than school. I have a job, I babysit, and I hang out with friends. I am extremely busy and even though I spend a lot of time doing nothing, there is never a time when I SHOULD be doing nothing. This class especially has given me a ton of stuff to work on throughout the semester. The last couple of weeks, I have been working on a paper for this class every single day. I am putting so much time into the assignments lately because I have not been satisfied with the grades from my previous assignments. There are three more papers to turn in and I want them to be even better than my papers have been; but I have been trying hard all semester so I don't know if I can do any better. Basically, I have an insane amount of stuff going on in my life right now, and I always want to do extremely well in everything that I am involved in, so I am always stressed out and worrying about something. I need a break.

Good vs. Evil

I have been putting so much time and effort into this Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde paper. I have probably spent a total of twelve hours on it over the last four days. Basically, it is at the point where it is completely ridiculous. This paper should not take this much time to write. I already have the outside sources that I am going to use, and I have already went through the book and highlighted and bookmarked examples that I want to use in my paper. I actually believe in the topic that I am writing about (how Jekyll and Hyde is relevant today). But still, I am having no luck what-so-ever on writing the paper. I will seriously just stare at the screen and try to figure out what to write next, but nothing is coming out. There are a few different reasons that are contributing to this.

The main reason is that I am discouraged. I am discouraged because I have always done really well in English, especially writing, and I feel like anything that I do in this class is not good enough. I am not satisfied with the grades that I have been getting and I am extremely worried that I will not get the grade that I am aiming for. I am very worried about upholding the 4.0 that I have in college and I feel like this class is going to ruin that. I feel like nothing I do is good enough, so why try?

Alter Ego

For the creative project, I was going to do a literary analysis of a song by Taylor Swift and then link that to research about the Make-A-Wish Foundation. This came to mind because I was at a complete loss for a topic. The song I chose was called "The Best Day", and I chose that mainly because it reminds me of a vacation that I went on with my parents to NYC a couple of summers ago. That is somewhere that I have always wanted to go, and one day we got in the car and my parents said that we were going to New York! That is where the Make-A-Wish Foundation comes in, I was going to find out more about the foundation and also, find examples of some of the wishes that children have had in the past. For the creative aspect of it, I was going to make a slideshow of my vacation pictures with "The Best Day" playing in the background.

But after reading Jekyll and Hyde, I think I might want to do my creative project on alter egos and living a double life...

Social Distance

In class, we talked about traditions that needed to be changed or ended. I am going to talk about something that has changed a lot in the past decade or two. The acceptance of gays. I was not around when the general population was against this lifestyle, but I realize that people are now a  lot more open to the idea than they used to be.

I asked 5 people yes or no questions about their opinions of gay people. (It is for a paper that I am writing in Sociology using the Bogardus Social Distance scale, a scale that measures how close you will let someone from a certain group get to you socially.) Here are the questions that I asked:

Would you be okay with having a homosexual as a close kin by marriage?
Would you be okay with having a homosexual in your club as a personal chum?
Would you be okay with having a homosexual on your street as a neighbor?
Would you be okay with having a homosexual working alongside you in your job?
Would you be okay with having a homosexual as a citizen in your country?
Would you be okay with having a homosexual as a visitor to your country?

Every single person answered 'Yes'. But there was one last question:

Would you exclude a homosexual from your country?

All five people answered 'No'.

Maybe this mini survey does not hold a lot of weight because it was only five people aged 18-22 that grew up in the same city. But I think it is really cool that people are starting to be more accepting of other's choices.

Papers Galore

I had a lot of writing to do in seven days; four separate papers for three different classes. Plus, two books to read.

The first paper was for my Sociology class. It was about deviance and breaking norms. I wrote about a two-year-old boy from Indonesia named Ardi Rizal that smokes 40 cigarettes a day. He weighs about 56 pounds and can barely move on his own.

The second paper was for my Theater class. I had to read a play and then summarize it and discuss how I would run the play. Basically just talk about what I would do the same, or different, than the author of the play. Then I had to find pictures to give a visual of how I saw the play in my head.

The last two papers were for English. I wrote down my idea for the creative project, but I don't think that I can make it a page long. Then the Frankenstein paper... Well, I went through the entire book and summarized everything, then I was going to go back in and add details. But then I realized that that is not a literary analysis, so I have to start all over again.

Not to mention, I had to write all of these while still going to class, working, babysitting, hanging out with friends, going out to dinner with the family, and attempting to sleep. Needless to say, I am so ready for Spring Break next week!

Random

I forgot all about posting a blog until just now. I've had so much homework lately and so much going on that it completely slipped my mind. But I just went to check my e-mail and it gave me the option of signing in with my google account, so it reminded me.

But anyways, I am in the process of writing the literary analysis of Frankenstein. I went through and quickly summarized all of the chapters. Now I am going to go back and add details and quotes and what-not. I figured that it would be less stressful to do it this way; and hopefully the paper will turn out better because of it.

As far as the creative project goes... I have absolutely no idea what to do it about. Partially because I don't exactly understand the assignment. Write a paper? Then draw a picture? Or no picture, just... anything? There has to be some research in the paper? And the paper can be about anything? As long as it relates to what we have been doing in class? Well, I am lost. I originally wanted to do my creative project about my favorite winter activity, snowboarding, but I'm not sure if that is a valid topic.

First Impressions

"You only get one chance to make a first impression!"

I'm sure that everyone has heard it, but that doesn't make it any less true. We tend to remember our first impression of something due to the primacy effect. In Psychology, the primacy effect is the tendency to remember the first items presented in a series, and for those items to be more influential.

Let's face it- we, as a society, are quick to judge others. If we meet someone through a mutual acquaintance, then we have probably heard stories about the new person, so we have already started to form an opinion of how we feel about this person. So going into the situation, we have a predisposition of whether or not we are going to like the person. Based on this predisposition, we will then pick out the positives or negatives of this person according to what we want to be true.

If you go into the situation thinking that someone is a good person, then you will pick up on all of their positive attributes. Then due to the primacy effect, chances are, this is how you will feel about this person for a very long time. Once you have made up your mind that they are a good person, then it is likely that it will take a lot to convince you otherwise.