The Art of Failure

Emotions and behaviors are difficult to decode and understand. Its hard and complicated to define what causes us to react a certain way when we under pressure, tension, or stress. Thanks to Malcom Gladwell, and his study, I’m now aware on the multiple reasons I act differently in specific situations. Throughout the article, Gladwell explains and illustrates different types of failures caused by two different main factors. These two mains factors are explicit learning and implicit learning. According to the author, these two factors might seem the same but “ they are words apart” (p86). Explicit learning is when someone starts thinking too much about something and lost focus on everything else. It defines as a choke, which occurs “ under conditions of stress” (p85) and pressure. Implicit learning is determinates when a person is panicked and think too little, “ learning that takes place outside of awareness”. This limits and narrows the memory of a person and make them react without thinking; “ Panic is reversion to instinct”.
Each one of us could refer to these situations because we all go through these situations whether you are a student, you have a job or participate in any kind of competition or presentation. I could go on and on and describe different situations I went through related to what Gladwell discusses. I actually have a speech to give today for my speech class and I’m afraid to panic and earn a bad grade!!!!!
As a student, I constantly go through the implicit learning while I’m taking a test. I remember for my SAT test, on my way to the room I was confident and promised myself to take my time to answer all the questions; however, once I got the paper in front of me, everything went blank. I panicked and didn’t know where to start, for some reason all the night I spent studying disappeared and all I can remember was “ finish the SAT, answer all the questions, don’t leave nothing out!!!!!”. I was horrified and I end up doing poorly.
I remember one day, I was going in the city with my family to a shop, it was sunny and warm. I’m the type of person who takes hours to get ready because I don’t like to rush myself; however, my dad is the entire opposite. He is always first at the door yelling at me because I’m taking too long. That day I was upstairs wondering which shoes I was going to wear and heard my dad in the car honking and screaming because I was taking too long again (the usual). Once I chose the shoes, I started heading to the car when I remember I forgot to bring my sunglasses. I ran upstairs and started looking for my glasses. For some reasons, I had misplaced them , I couldn’t find it. I was looking around, searching for the box where I usually put my glasses and I didn’t realize that my sun glasses were actually right in front of me out of the box. I was thinking too (implicit learning) much about the box and forgot that may be the glasses wasn’t in the box but outside.
Now that I’m aware of the type of failure we face in our everyday routine, I will be able to control them and avoid them.

The Story of Bottled Water

The video by Annie Leonard on The Story of Bottled Water stun me!! There are several fact that Leonard mentions in her video that strike me. It really never occur me to think about how the bottle of water was processed, or ask myself why I rather buy a $1.50 bottle of water than drinking tap water, it just happened!! When I’m outside and I’m thirsty I don’t like drinking from the school fountains or the bathroom’s water (really?) so I prefer buying water and when I’m home we don’t directly drink tap water we use Brita as a filter.
When I buy a bottle of water I always feel like it is safer to drink that than drinking tap water, I guess I’m one of those who fell for the ridiculous propaganda from the companies that Leonard mentions in her video. According to Leonard, the water in the bottles have lower quality compared to tap water and that most water from those expensive brands of bottle come from tap water!! Not only it has less quality, it expensive and has less taste!! It is truth though, I find the water that I drink home (tap water with the filter) tastier than the water from the bottle!! And all those bottles end up polluting our environment! The companies seduce us with their beautiful picture of mountain and rivers, and by scaring and telling us that tap water is not safe. This is a way to mislead us and hide the real truth about where they obtain the water in their bottle.
Another fact that Leonard mentions was how the companies lies about the way they recycle the bottle. As we all know water is good for our health and a lot of people would rather buy a bottle of water than soda, which means they will be an excessive amount of bottles threw in the garbage; where all these bottles go? According to Leonard, 80% lend whether in land field and won’t decompose for at least 1000 of years, or burn which release toxic solutions in the atmosphere. The other 20% is shipped to India and loaded in a specific place and sometimes lend in other people backyard as Leonard describes it. This is absurd!!! Water is the most natural and wealthy thing we obtain from our environment and companies found a way to make it one of the worst polluting factors of our environment, this is ironic. As Leonard states in her video, less people are buying bottle of water which is good and make the companies furious!!
I came from a little island from Africa, and because it’s a poor country we don’t have the equipment required to have safe tap water so most avoid drinking from tap water. We always drunk from filter water, boiled water or bottle of water but that is understandable . However now that I know the real story behind those bottles of water I’m curious to know whether or not the bottle we used in my country have lower quality than our tap water.
Companies always find ways to blind their costumer from the reality and make them buy their product, now that I know the truth, I won’t buy no bottle of water!!!

BLog #7

What would I do if I had one hour left? That a complicated and delicate question and I really don’t know where to start. I never really ask that question to myself and now that I think about it I have no idea where to commence. I’m not even good at managing my time for homework so I don’t know how I will be able to manage my last hour of breath. I will accomplish so many things that I will still be doing them after 59minutes. I won’t waste one second at all, I will be running all over the place to finish what I have in mind.
For the first time, I will manage my time and make sure I time everything that I do so I will be able to accomplish everything. I know for sure, I won’t spend this last hour doing my homework, going shopping, pampering myself, talking on the phone, texting or going to see my boyfriend. There is a specific way I want to spend this last hour. For this last hour I would like to leave a memorable souvenir or me to the people I love.
First of all I will try to reunite my family and all the people that I love including my boyfriend and spend quality time with them. I will stay with them for at least 20 minutes. I will tell them how much I love them, how they are special to me and how being with them and receiving their unconditional love is what kept me going. After those 20 minutes, I will invite them to a fine restaurant and have fun dance and laugh. Anybody that I love are aware on how I care about their stomachs and always try to make sure they are full and happy. We will spend approximately 30 minute at the restaurant. For the remaining 10 minutes, we will go get ice cream at “ Cold Stone”. What would I order? I will order my triple chocolate “ Chocolate Devotion” and go back home to devour our delicious ice cream. Yes, I love chocolate , I actually live through chocolate. Believe it or not but I must eat chocolate at least once a day or I will have a bad day.
You might find it weird but I would like to spend my last minutes devouring chocolate ice cream and being surrounded by people I love. There is nothing better than the combination of love and ice cream. What I just described here is what I refer as a perfect day. I had spend days like this with my family and I miss it because now everyone is too busy at school, work or being a mother to hangout.

How I'm doing so far

How I’m doing so far? So far, so good. In overall I’m doing good in all my classes and I’m planning to declare my major next semester. I will declare my major as chemistry or biology; I’m still thinking about it and I will take classes this summer to make my final decision.
I don’t know about you guys, but I hate this ugly weather and I can’t wait for summer to come. I’m just struggling to control what goes on my dish so I could look good on my swimsuit and summer cloths!!!Otherwise, everything is great just busy studying for my midterm and starting my research paper. I still want to write my paper about the diseases in Africa before and after colonization. I’m in the middle of my research taking information in and evaluating whether or not I can use it or whether or not it reliable. The trip at the library and the classes with the librarian really helped me, I thought I knew how to use my library facilities but I was wrong!!!!!! There is a lot more credible websites I could use from the library that will guide me through my research. By the way, yesterday while I was in the process of typing keys words and looking for journals, books or articles I found another topic that I could elaborate. Yes I know I might change my topic again, I’m tempted!! The new topic is about the difference and connections between western and traditional medicine. This topic is really appealing, and I’m really tempted to write about it. For now I’m collecting research from both topics and then I will decide which one of them to pick depending on the information I will gather. Like I always said, this paper is tricky and one topic can lead you to another topic and that is confusing and tricky!!!! Hopefully I will make my decision for my topic this weekend.
Have a great day everyone and be careful with the storm today !!!!!!!
Sofia

Blog#4

The movie Beats and Rhymes by Byron Hurt empathizes the representation of manhood in Hip-Hop culture. According to Hurt most rappers sings about how they are strong, have plenty females, how they could dominate everybody, and how they are rich. They don’t realize that by projecting this image they are empathizing stereotype among minorities. Within the lines, the rapper are trying to identify themselves. Hurt made an interesting point about one of the famous rapper, Snoop dog who will have insulting messages about women and have inappropriate videos ,however, that is just an image Snoop Dog is projecting because in reality he has a lovely wife and daughters and sons. Rappers make all those insulting songs, all those inappropriate videos because that what the media is demanding. According to Hurt, the media and the label record are the one deliberately projecting this image and modifying the meaning of hip hop. Media refuse to take rapper that want that portrait the positive messages and positive image. Therefore, in order to succeed rappers have to support this the commercial projection even though this will lead to dramatic change in the real life. This perpetuate the mind of minorities such as black, and Latino to define the wrong idea of man through hip hop.
Most of the hip hop songs are about violence, how they going to kill somebody, how they going to shoot everybody that comes across them, and how they going to enjoy killing them. Hurt raised this issue of violence and explained that violence have been among minorities since the beginning and that why most rappers refers to it. To support his arguments , Hurt showed us how the movies are all about guns and killing without empathy and this influence our everyday life. Now most men believe violence is necessary and in order to survive and protect their family, they need to be capable of killing and get ready to affront the real world.
Another issue that Hurt raised in his video is how the rappers are homophobia and write insulting songs about homosexual.
Comparing this video to the McBride’s narrative, McBride passage was evaluating Hip Hop in the positive way by demonstrating how hip hop was born and how it was the cries of young people who was suffering. McBride empathizes Hip Hop on a global scale by giving example on how people all over the world rap, it has a different shape but still project the same message. However, the McBride’s passage and the Hurt’s video has one fact in common because they both realize how hip-hop had lost its message and value and it now more a commercial propaganda.
After seeing the both side of hip hop I prefer the message it had when it first came out. That message was more relevant and anybody could identify themselves through the lyrics. Now I can’t stand watching hip hop video and sometimes I find myself dancing over insulting messages about women without realizing. I usually like hip hop because of the beat but once I take a step back and listen to the lyric attentively I regret the fact that I danced over that song.

The American Life

This video by Ara Glass illustrated us a normal 6 grade class during an art class. Two classmates sat down together and out of nowhere created a fake TV camera out of a box with a whole in the middle and a cord. With this TV camera they started making news report about everything and anything. Everybody envy them and wanted to have the same TV camera. The next day everybody made their TV camera and was making their news report. The TV camera became a trend and the shows became competitive. As day passed by, everyone try to make their camera fancy by adding new tools: for example a girl will add a pink cord, or someone will make a stand that will support the camera.
One day, a kid was getting beat up pretty badly by a bully, the kid surrounded them but instead of helping the hopeless boy they started recording and making their news report. It was as if the TV camera has sucked out all their sense of empathy. Teacher had to come and help the poor kid that was getting beat up. The teachers then decided to ban the TV camera because it went out of control and had changed the kid’s behavior. The kid acted differently behind the camera, they were over taking by the envy of reporting what was going on whether than helping the kid.

The message that the author is trying to project here is that, one minor thing can change everything else. I see that on my everyday life. Technology will be an example; the improvement of technology such as iphone, kitchen equipments had a major impact on our life. I don’t need to wash dishes like before I could just put them in the machine and press a button and it clean. Instead of going outside and play most kid stay home watches TV or play video games and this has a major impact on their health because they don’t exercise enough. Another example will be the iphone listening to music all the time, even when we around people we know and this has an impact on how we communicate and on our health because of the radiations. I could write an entire paper on how one thing can change everything else. If I had the choice I would have lived in the time where there wasn’t all these innovation to interfere with our everyday life.

Confused about my topic!!!

I thought I knew what I wanted to write about for me research paper. Now that I think about it, I already wrote a paper about leadership and used Nelson Mandela as an example and it will be repetitive to use the same topic again. I had another topic as “privacy and internet” but I found out that I’m not that interested in this, and I won’t enjoy writing a paper about it.
My mind is wondering around and try to find a topic that would engage me enough to write an excellent and inspiring paper about it. I know for sure that I’m inspired by children and health and I’m hoping to become a pediatrician. However I still don’t know how to embrace and combine those two topics and make a research paper. I thought about writing a paper that will talk about the children’s rights and how certain countries didn’t signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child . One of the country that didn’t ratified the convention is the United States, however, children here have more rights and benefit to more things as education and health than other countries that actually signed the Convention. I could try to gear to that direction and use specific example but I still don’t know if this topic need to be narrow down further.
Another topic that I would like to consider is the attitude of children throughout the world. On how child’s attitude and behavior differ depending on the environment and people that surround them. Being raised in Africa with a specific manners and education, the way I treat my parents and elder is slightly different from how other teenager my age treat their own. I remember, I was on the bus when a girl (age average 17-19 years old) was behind me and was talking on the phone with her mother. She started screaming, and yelling at her saying “ you are in no place to settler rules, last semester I was on the street all the time and you never say nothing about it so now you don’t got no right to say anything I will come back home when I feel like it.” I was startled on the tone she used to talk to her mother. I would never be able to use that tone to talk to my mother even though she makes me mad and furious, it just the way I was brought up. I don’t know if this topic will end up being too personal or whether or not I would be able to find credible information to support my thesis.
Overall, instead of moving forward I’m moving backward. I must find a topic before next week so I could begin my research. If you guys have any recommendation for topics you believe that I would be intereset in don’t hesitated and let me know. I could use some little hint :p.