-Sincerely Ki

The end of the semester is NEAR ! How have you been running your academic race? Does it look a little something like this? Don’t fret fellow college student you’ve got this. 

How do you feel about the end of your semester? I really hope all is well for you as I do for myself. As the end of the semester is approaching I am growing more confident. For the first time in my life I hit some academic hiccups that I never thought I’d see. Although the middle of my semester looked a little like the ending of the GIF above, I kept running. Now I am feeling better than ever about my grades and the progress I have made. I am doing everything in my power to max out my grades for the ending of the semester. College is very hard and we all are challenged everyday. College truly feels like a week-by-week survival training. One week you could have it all and the next you failed 2 exams,  but DO NOT fret ! KEEP GOING and remember the end goal. Success is not possible without first experiencing failure in some way.

For myself personally after pushing past the hiccups of this semester I learned something about myself. I learned that when I get knocked down I come back swinging even harder than before. This ability is one that I am truly grateful for. I feel as if I have been stretched beyond limitations that I set for myself. This semester’s experience has taught me to not limit myself. Go above and beyond. Why stop at the moon? Officially stressed and overloading with work and study guides, but also officially handling it. Maybe a post on college stress levels next?

                                                                  Sincerely,

“ You wake up, and as you’re emerging into consciousness, you feel this horrible dread.. Immediately, your mind starts to race..You think about all the crap that you have to do at work..You’re going to have to fight traffic, you’ll be late picking your kids up, your dog is sick.. Oh my God. What is wrong with my life? ..Too often we come to the sweeping and inaccurate conclusion that our life stinks. ” -  Lisa Feldman Barrett.

View this article here, XX

I know we all are living different lives, but we all have many things in common. One of these things simply being the human experience. One awful part of the modern day human experience is having to wake up in the morning. The horrible sound of your alarm clock, the bright sun shining exactly in the little slit of your eye, and finally the evil voices in your head reminding you of all the tasks you have for the day is something every person dreads. Okay maybe everyone may not dread it, but I sure do. Sometimes just merely coming back to consciousness after a lovely night of shut-eye makes you think “Is work really worth getting out of my bed?” Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett says, yes it is worth it and no life does not suck, you just feel like it does because of your physical conditions.

You may be wondering, “what does your physical condition have to do with how you feel about life?” According to Barrett, you only feel that dreadful feeling in the morning because your brain senses physical sensation that make you feel unpleasant. Whenever you wake up you have to ask yourself if you’re hungry, dehydrated, or just not well rested. These are key clues that if lacking, your brain will send signals to the rest of the body that you feel misery. Although we believe that emotions are beyond our control, Barrett also disproves this statement through research at the Affective Science Laboratory at Northeastern University in Boston. She states “Your brain is searching to find an explanation for those sensations in your body that you experience as wretchedness...Those sensations might not be an indication that anything is wrong with your life … Maybe you’re tired.” Who knew not having physical needs met could influence and wreck you emotionally? Oh yeah, Maslow and his Hierarchy of Needs. 

This was a pretty interesting Ted read hence me sharing it with you all. I enjoying reading about Lisa Feldman Barrett dissect her findings and apply it to the everyday life situation. When I wake up tomorrow morning and experience that dread, I will drink some water and re-evaluate my physical being for sure. 

                                                                       Feeling less dreadful already,

You can't numb those hard feelings without numbing the other affects, our emotions. You cannot selectively numb. So when we numb those, we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness. And then, we are miserable, and we are looking for purpose and meaning, and then we feel vulnerable, so then we have a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin. And it becomes this dangerous cycle.  -  Brené Brown

Vulnerability is defined as “ the quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally”. As human beings, vulnerability can honestly mean life or death for us. Whether the imminent threat be a blunt as being trapped in a lion’s den or even a bit softer, like being in a new relationship, vulnerability plays a huge role in how we operate emotionally.

In this Ted Talk, self-proclaimed “researcher-storyteller”  Brené Brown unravels the results of a social experiment she conducted in order to observe the interactions between human beings and to observe general connectivity. She talks about the findings of her research basically being summed up as messy emotions and shame, for the most part, is created by people being afraid of being disconnected from others. Brown states that she believes that connectivity is the whole purpose behind the human existence. Whenever she stated that it made me realize that shame and connectivity are most definitely intertwined. Shame arises whenever you feel like an action you took might make other people “disconnect” from you. I agree with her completely whenever she says “ What underpinned this shame, this "I'm not good enough," -- which, we all know that feeling: .. was excruciating vulnerability. This idea of, in order for connection to happen, we have to allow ourselves to be seen, really seen.”

  I had to watch this Ted Talk twice because the concepts completely went over my head the first go round. The truth is that shame really does breed vulnerability. Vulnerability is in my opinion what makes us human. The imperfection that is packaged with vulnerability will humble a person with lightning speed. Vulnerability is knowing you could get harmed in the process but believing in yourself and the outcome so much that you say screw shame, I have to push through the discomfort and meet my goal.

Understanding the connections that Brown made really made me much more interested in what she had to say. I was able to see the experiment from her perspective and I truly enjoyed it. She is an incredible speaker who is very engaging with the audience. She makes a fairly decent “researcher-storyteller”.

                                                     Currently pushing through the discomfort, 

When you eat can be just as important as what you eat by Mary Halton

Read the article here, XX

Photo by:  Raúl Soria

It is pretty common knowledge that your body is your temple and what you eat is your fuel. In order to survive we have to have energy and the ability to store it. Food is where humans get their energy. For us to maximize our potential for energy and storage we have to eat the right things. Now, recently conducted research is suggesting that what time you consume food is just as important as what you actually consume.

Following the research of chronobiologist Emily Monoogian, she states that not only is it important to eat healthy it is of equal importance to eat whenever your body actually need its, not just because. Emily Monoogian has found through research that adjusting when you eat is what could could improve your life just as much as changing what you eat. She conducted her research by observing the daily timing habits of about a thousand people per day in different part of the world. 

I like how she includes in her article what the circadian rhythm of life was and how it affects certain bodily functions. Everything that is a process inside of the human body has a circadian rhythm. For example, whenever your heart beats it has a certain rhythm that it has to keep up with in order to keep you a live. Similarly, so does our digestive system. Monoogian states that “The two biggest cues you can give your body to tell it the time of day [are] light and food..” Considering we live in a world with artificial light and food available to us at all times of the day, our circadian rhythm is way off.

To avoid circadian-rhythm related diseases such as heart disease and diabetes, Monoogian recommends “time-restricted eating”. Restricting the times in which you eat will help your body to distinguish between it being day-time and night-time. She also recommends practicing less light stimulation at night time so your body can get the proper rest it needs to maintain the rhythm. I think her conclusion is appropriate because her facts are solid and the research that was done was supported by other experiments. It did leave me with one question at the end; “Will humans evolve to have a new circadian rhythm?”

I’ll consider this next time it’s time for bed and I am aimlessly scrolling on my Twitter feed with a chocolate-infused late night snack.

                                                                      Until next post,

“..Urbanization of Bangkok, growing in every direction, shifting from porous, agricultural land -- the land that can breathe and absorb water -- to a concrete jungle...This land has no room for water. It has lost its absorbent capacity.” 

- Kotchakorn Voraakhom

In this Ted Talk a landscape architect, Kotchakorn Voraakhom, hands out the hard truth about climate change and what it means for our planet. She is from the city of Bangkok, Thailand. Thailand is known the the major cities within it. Thailand is also known for people one of the world’s most flood-susceptible cities. Voraakhom went on to describe one of the worst flooding disasters in the world that happened in Thailand in 2011. It was one of the most catastrophic and expensive floods to ever happen in history. Because Thailand is basically a concrete jungle, the runoff from the rain has no where to go. Because of this water was trapped making Thailand a big lake.

This is the moment Voraakhom realized something needed to be done to prevent such natural disater effects. She took the problem into her own hands, and along with help from her team a park was created in an effort to catch runoff.

“ Centenary Park gives room for people and room for water, which is exactly what we and our cities need. This is an amphibious design.”

In 2012, Voraakhom and her crew designed the  Chulalongkorn Centenary Park.  In their design they stated that the purpose of the park was to add green space and to have a place for runoff water can be absorbed. The park was created on a tilted plane in order to accomplish that.

Being a Biology major, this story is and excellent story of taking your gifts to give back to the world and that is truly amazing to see in our day and age. It is extremely sad that our planet has come to this, but we can’t turn back now. I applaud her and her team for their truly admirable project and extensive research.

***Click the GIF above to be redirected to the Ted Talk video ! ***

“Hard choices are precious opportunities for us to celebrate what is special about the human condition..in the space of hard choices, that we have the power to create reasons for ourselves to become the distinctive people that we are. And that's why hard choices are not a curse but a godsend. “ - Ruth Chang

Choices. Something we do everyday whether we think about it or not. This is the one thing we get to control in our universe and we take it for granted every time. Think about the last time you made a choice. For me it was “should I go to sleep or type this blog entry early?” Obviously I chose this entry because it seemed to be the better and more productive option. But according to Philosopher Ruth Chang, there are no “better option”, just pros and cons to each one. So what should you do wherever making tough decision like choosing between places to live or even your career path? Chang dissects her theory below:

 “Hard choices are hard not because of us or our ignorance; they're hard because there is no best option. Now, if there's no best option..then surely the alternatives must be equally good. So maybe the right thing to say in hard choices is that they're between equally good options...If alternatives are equally good, you should just flip a coin between them, and it seems a mistake to think, here's how you should decide between careers, places to live, people to marry: Flip a coin. “

When I first heard this part I was stuck in my logic and thought to myself “that’s so stupid...” but, as she began to go further I began to see her perspective more and more. You narrowed your options down to just two, hence having to make a final decision. You chose those two choices because they were better than the others. Now that you are at the final decision you are stuck. You are stuck because both option are equally as appealing they each just have a pro and con. If one was as “less appealing” as you’d thought, the decision wouldn’t be hard. This perspective really helped me to expand the way I see other people’s point of views and it helped to look through Ruth Chang’s eyes a bit. Maybe I’ll consider this the next time I choose where to get coffee. Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts? No seriously, the choice is rough every time. 

                                                                                 Off to bed,

The Developing Norms for Reopening Schools After Shootings by Ashley Fetters

This photo, taken on March 14, 2018, shows students protesting gun laws and gun violence at the White House in Washington, DC. Students walked out of school to protest gun violence in a massive demonstration against the massacre of 17 people at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

*  Photo by Carolyn Kaster, AP Photo.

The fear that has swept across America seems almost unreal. In older times kids went to school worrying about tests and probably bullies. Students in my generation don’t worry about bullies anymore  because we are too busy worrying about bullets. Many schools are implementing what they call “active shooter drills”. This is such a stretch from the “stop, drop, and roll” type drills we learned in our early years. How can a school just go back to normal operations after such a tragedy takes place? Read further to find out.

 In the article, writer Ashley Fetters discusses not only how schools now have this wave of fear, but how schools actually recover from mass shootings. In the article Fetters states that many of the recent schools that have had mass shooting re-open in three similar phases; 1. School closes for a short period of time, 2. A memorial ceremony is held to pay respects, 3. School reopens with major security upgrades. Now, there is no rule book to how to best recover from such an evil tragedy, but one thing is for certain; The classroom atmosphere will never be the same. Ever. The emotional trauma which was experienced in those buildings cannot be erased or healed in a quick manner. While taking greater security measures is more than expected, it still will never help the students/staff which were affected. I personally believe school should be closed for way more than just three days to two weeks. That seems like SUCH an insult to the dead, injured, and traumatized victims. A month should be the minimum for such a recovery. Our next step in America needs to be preventative action. As sad as it sounds, active shooter drills need to be commonplace. They need to be well-planned as well as well-rehearsed. While gun laws in America need the ultimate fix, illegal gun use will still happen and unfortunately so will tragedies. Until our country starts to take our kids safety more seriously, these type of tragedies will never end.

                                                                    On a serious note,

                                                                       - (Sadly) Sincerely Ki

PS:

Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators by Megan McArdle

“Most writers manage to get by because, as the deadline creeps closer, their fears of turning in nothing eventually surpasses their fears of turning in something terrible.” - Megan McArdle , a columnist at Bloomberg View

Procrastination is defined as “the act of postponing or delaying something..”. This is something all humans do no matter how excellent/poor at something we are. Columnist and author Megan McArdle describes procrastination as “peculiarly common” among writers. She believes procrastination is something that occurs whenever we are afraid of failure or “not performing well”. I completely agree with her. I believe procrastination can stem from subconscious fears that hold us back from getting things done. While some people think they “do well under pressure” , procrastination is really just a mask for laziness at times. No matter how well you do under pressure, delaying  finishing a task that has an approaching due date is never a good idea. 

As far as procrastination in school goes, I think a lot of it has to do with how intelligent someone is. I believe that more intelligent people procrastinate more because, similarly to what McArdle said, they are used to being about to do things last minute and get an A. While true, this way of doing things doesn’t last forever.  Especially in the high school to college transition, this is whenever procrastination hits the hardest. Being in high school and being smart, you get used to putting things together last minute and it being good enough. Once you get to college, you realize very soon how dangerous of a game procrastination really is.

                                                                           Signed a retiring procrastinator,

                                                                                              -Sincerely Ki

PS:

Ever hear the phrase “money can’t buy happiness” ? While some believe this statement is a bunch of bologna, Social Science Researcher Michael Norton dissects the truth/falsehood behind this statement. 

In this Ted-Talk Michael conducts an experiment on undergraduate students in Canada involving money. They give people money and ask them to spend it on themselves or on others. His studies showed that spending money on other people brought happiness, while spending money on themselves left no affect. This showed the positive correlation between spending money on others and being a happier person.

I think this experiment was genius in many ways. The first being how amazing the results of the experiment was. I believe that having money can either do one of two thing to a person; make them selfish vs. making them more selfless. Whenever the latter is experienced, it is a truly amazing act of humankind in my eyes. The second reason I was so thoroughly amazed and entertained by this experiment was because it made you think about how you have felt whenever you’ve previously spent money on yourself vs. on someone else. The results were accurate because whenever you spend money on other people, you get this kind of satisfaction from the smile on their face and their gratitude towards you. When you’re just spending money on yourself, that satisfaction isn’t there.  That gratitude from another human being is truly what makes you happier from my perspective. I really enjoyed watching this Ted-Talk and learning about this social experiment. I’ll definitely take this into account the next time I purchase a gift for someone. Remember, money can’t buy you happiness, but the way in which you spend it can.

The Shadow Scholar: The man who writes your students' papers tells his story

Reported by Jonathan Barkat for The Chronicle Review

By Ed Dante (pseudonym for the actual shadow scholar0

  As a college student I understand the pressure of having minimum five essays due by the end of a week. The stress is undeniably the most dreadful feelings I have ever felt in my life. Below here are some students that alleviate that stress by breaking the student code of conduct. Here the person who consumes all of that stress....but for a price tells his/her story. 

In the article the author states that they work for a company which makes tens of thousands of dollars a month off of students by creating authentically-made (not bot-produced) essays, tailored to a student’s needs. Sounds too good to be true, right? For the right price, you can be a lazy scholar. The writer states that during midterms and finals is whenever they are the busiest and that the 50 writers are not enough to supply demand. We all are aware that cheating exists everywhere, but what you may not know is the lengths people got to in order to cheat successfully. As a student who writes her own essays this is annoying but then again I didn’t spend any money on an essay that may or may not even get a good grade. 

I think as a business idea this is genius. So much money can be made as the supply is greater than the demand. I think from the shadow scholar’s perspective they have a rough job that is just as stressful. It must be frustrating to have great works but to not have credit for it. Be it one page or fifteen.  They did sign up to have their name left off and for their own work to be plagiarized for pay so I don’t necessarily feel bad for them..I wonder if any student has been caught?

                                                                   Until next time..I have essays to write,

Video Link:

https://www.ted.com/talks/meg_jay_why_30_is_not_the_new_20?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare

“Do something that adds value to who you are, do something that is an investment in who you wanna be next.”

In this Ted Talk Clinical Psychologist Meg Jay speaks on the factual information from research that suggests that a person’s 20′s are the most defining decade of a person’s life. As I am an individual who is approaching my 20′s, I was very interested to learn what she had to say. Log story short, she states that the 20′s is THE time for a person to get their career off the ground, to travel, to make friends, and to build the person you want to become because the brain is in the final stages of development. She states that by telling people in their 20′s that they have their 30′s to get life together it insures procrastination that is harmful and actually untrue.

I personally was disappointed in this Ted Talk because it wasn’t as interesting as I thought it would be. Personally the psychology account bored me and just shows that humans have issues in life that we have to work through, *shocker*. The only new information I gained from this was that the brain has it’s final developmental moment in your 20′s.

                        Hopefully I can dissect something more interesting next time,

Why Walking Helps Us Think by Ferris Jabr

While walking do you ever really just assess how you feel? Do you ever just think continuously while walking around? Maybe? I’m not sure either, but here’s why you should !

Ferris Jabr, a contributor to The New Yorker magazine is a writer who usually dives into subjecting having to do with the mind of humans and animals. In this article he wrote, he goes into the benefits of walking and also the benefits/affect it has on the human mind. Jabr used sources such as many Greek philosophers, and even American philosophers such as Henry David Thoreau. 

Ferris Jabr makes the claim that there is an undeniable connection between the feet and the mind. In the article he states that “..walking changes our chemistry..” by making the heart pump faster, and by being able to circulate more oxygen and blood throughout the body. Considering these two facts are true I believe the connection as well. If you are able to circulate needed regulatory systems in the body at a faster rate, you will be able to think more clearly and precisely as more oxygen/blood supplies the brain. Another point he makes is that walking stimulates molecules needed to develop new brain cells and neuron pathways. This was an extremely interesting article to read being that I am a biology geek and enjoy learning about the mysteries of life.  

Jabr also states that because walking is sort of an autonomous act it gives you the mental space to actually de-clutter and think about other thoughts. To prove this claim he further sites information from an experiment done by two Sanford scientists,  Oppezzo and Schwartz, that show the effects of walking, sitting, and sauntering (walking in a slow/relaxed manner) had on how well volunteers performed on mental tests. The results of the experiment favored the claim that walking is instrumental in formulating newer and better thoughts. Maybe next time I write a blog-post I’ll walk around with my laptop. Until next time !

To view this article click here XX !

We’ve ALL experienced it. You study for hours, you do the homework, you remember the facts, you take the test, you don’t do so well. What now? Now is time to play catch-up. You do well for the rest of the semester but for some reason that 79% sitting on your grade-book diminishes every shred of work you have put in. That C does not reflect how well you have done in the class. It just suggests how good your performance in class appears to be. Little does it show all of those hours and that sudden moment that the material clicked in your head and you truly understood. Oh well. None of that matters since you have a C.

Alfie Kohn is an American author/lecturer in the areas of education and human behavioral patterns. In the reading “From Degrading to De-grading” he explains to educators and parents what most students have felt forever; Grading is not an effective measure of performance or intelligence. He goes on to state the specifics on how detrimental grades are to student’s mental health and even student/teacher relationships. Grades create this unrealistic feeling of “I’m not trying hard enough” You could in fact be trying as hard as you can but if you don’t understand information in the fashion your teacher has explained it, does that mean said student is unteachable or even unintelligent? No. It just means that lack understanding and failing at having to maintain this forced image of being the perfect student is underway.

 What do grades do to students? According to Alfie, it does the complete opposite of what you might think. For example “Grades encourage cheating. Again, we can continue to blame and punish all the students who cheat -- or we can look for the structural reasons this keeps happening. Researchers have found that the more students are led to focus on getting good grades, the more likely they are to cheat...” This example is absolute truth. The reason cheating is such a big issue has nothing to do with lack of creativity/free-thought but more to do with deadlines and the fact the in order to have good grades, the answer you chose has to be right. Right is right even if it is wrong in schools and that’s where I believe the root of many educational issues stem. If we examine that and re-evaluate how students are taught, I can assure you that instances of cheating/plagarism would most likely lessen.

 I’m not the first to say this but I know for a fact I will not be the last; Grades do not reflect intelligence or knowledge of a subject. They just show how good you are at picking the right answer.

****WARNING****: Extreme truth embedded in a series of jokes. Watch at your own risk ! 

“Do Schools Kill Creativity?”

I will start by saying how hilarious I believe the speaker, Ken Robinson, to be. Usually Ted Talks are such a bore to me. Ken actually entertained me while explaining his points in a clear fashion. To give some slight background, Ken Robinson is an author, speaker, and an international adviser on education in the creative arts to various organizations such as the government, educators, etc... He gives his opinion on how he believes school limits the different types of learners. He also mentions how he thinks kids are diagnosed with things such as ADD when really they just don’t learn in a conventional way. I absolutely agree that school is only fit for certain types of learners such as auditory learners. I think that schools should change the landscape of education in a w way that suits all learners. For example, teaching more lessons outside. Having more group work, more visual, and things of that nature. Schools should also recognize and test students for the type of learners they are and group them in classes in that manner. I think this unorthodox approach would raise the number of people with degrees and high school diplomas. So yes, schools do kill creativity in the people that are not suited to learn how schools want you to learn.

                                                                 Until next time,

                                                                               - Sincerely Ki

In the modern world that we live in today if you were to ask anyone what they believed the key to success is you might get answers such as; hard work, commitment, college degrees, or even dedication. According to two viral YouTubers, Suli Breaks and “Boyinaband” a.k.a. Dave Brown, all of these things are key but getting further education isn’t really as important as the other three.

Suli Breaks’ passionate spoken word piece on why education and success are more than just “going to college”. He states that school is just a cycle of students just regurgitating facts and taking in information well enough to pass a class. He also makes the point that many famous/rich people have built empires and they have no formal education. I completely agree with the fact that college is basically regurgitation of facts that you will let go by next semester just to get by. I agree because I do it, other college students do it, and the simple truth is we all do it. Pass the exam, learn more facts, learn how that professor wants you to learn the facts and then pass another exam. You pass the exam, not because you know the information well, but because that’s how your professor has trained you to know the subject. One part of the video I disagreed with was whenever he named all the celebrities that have become successful in their fields but did not go to college. This sends the wrong message to the masses. To me that statement screams out, “Hey, forget college! Go chase your dream and it WILL happen” That’s misleading. I believe in following your heart, but sometimes what your heart wants isn’t best for you and your future.

The title “Don’t Stay in School” tells exactly how this artist feels about the subject. Dave goes on to sing about how in school we learn pointless things, such as the Pythagorean Theorem, Shakespeare, and the Quadratic Formula instead of actual helpful things such as how to buy a house, how to budget, how to elect representatives. I absolutely agree with his stance on schools teaching us stupid things that we will never use ever (Unless you’re a mathematics or theatre major, woohoo !) I have never understood why I can tell you “y=mx+b” without flinching but am a young adult and still have no clue how to buy a house or apartment. Why are schools not teaching us practical life lessons? Who decided that knowing the equation of a circle is more important to teach young people rather than knowing how to pay a bill? These are questions that need to be addressed. After my last my class next semester I will never need the equation of a parabola ever again. Pointless. One thing that I do disagree with on this video is the title “Don’t Stay In School”. It is very misleading because school is important to teach young people how to learn. It does teach us useless things but as well teaches us things we will need until we die such as good grammar/writing skills.

The messages of these videos are very important and something that we as a society should look more into. What we teach our youth today is how our world will go around tomorrow. These videos share the similar tone of school does not equal education. Learning is the key to education. They share a different tone because Suli talks more about having an education rather than a college education, while Dave speaks more about the irrelevant subjects school teaches. Personally I would say Suli’s piece was more entertaining and easier to get in touch with but I liked the message of Dave’s piece more. It just makes me wonder...will I ever forget the Pythagorean Theorem? Will I ever learn how to buy a house? Stay tuned.