Metacognition: Get Organized -- A Tribute to Aristotle

Throughout this whole wonderful, relaxing Thanksgiving break, I was brainstorming ideas about what to reorganized in my life. I could have easily written about cleaning my room, but I do that task every week so it wouldn't be something new that I've done. However, I did do some rearrangement in my life and I just realized that I've done it today.

I told myself that I would finish my college applications this break and so I had to sit myself down, lock myself in, and motivate myself to accomplish this task. So I ventured off to the new and improved Glenview Public Library, rented myself once of those quiet study cubicles and had two hours to finish those darn, dreadful applications.

Right before I opened up my laptop to get started, I brought alllllll of those college pamphlets and brochures that they send me throughout the year. I kept them all in a drawer in my desk and they just kept piling and piling. So I brought all of them with me to the library and realized that I need to just keep all the college pamphlets and brochures of the colleges that I want to go to and that I am going to apply.

And so, I threw out all of the trash mail from the colleges that I am not interested at all to go to and/or apply to, and in the end, I had all the necessary packets from the 6-7 colleges that I want to apply to. Now I wanted to put them in a nice orderly fashion. It's a good thing I brought a binder and some folders so I got into putting those packets/pamphlets/brochures into their own categories of the different colleges I am interested in. I bind them up in the binder and voila! it's alll organized in a nice neat order and now I can function properly.

As I reflect upon my reorganization, I realized several things. Before assorting the college packets/pamphlets/brochures, I was kinda stressed prior to finishing my apps. And I absolutely HATE it when things are disorganized (this is why I need to clean my room once a week). So I strictly had to sit myself down and actually do something about this disorganization. While doing this assortment, I felt great and once I get into the mood of doing something, I keep going and forget about the outside world. I just kept pushing and pushing myself to accomplish this task. And once I had my huge, fat binder finished, I felt relieved and obviously less stressed.

I'm a very organized person and I need to have everything in it's place or else I cannot function properly. Little things such as putting brochures into categories can really save time and create a stress-free environment. I know for a fact that if I take the time to organize everything and know where everything is, I will most definitely go far in life.

Change of Mind: An Eternal Life

For the past several years, I've been deathly afraid of death (irony!). I simply couldn't take the fact that one day, I will just disappear from the face of the earth...forever. Forever?! That's a very long time and I can't imagine going through something for an eternity. I was just scared of the unknown. Of what ACTUALLY happens once I die. Will I still have my spirit and carry it on forever in an eternal realm? Will I be in a place of pure happiness? A place where I will just forget about time and not know that it's for eternity? All these questions cloud in my mind and sometimes, I get the weirdest feeling in my body whenever I think about this subject.

And throughout this whole time, I've always wanted to live forever. I just wanted to see what the world would be like in the year 5348. How humans would change. How technology would change. Food, cultures, music, etc. It was because of the fact that I was scared of death and didn't want to experience that reality.

However, I recently changed my mind. One day, during Humanities class, we were talking about philosophy and the future and how in each generation we are embarrassed of the previous generation of their thoughts, technology, innovative ideas, etc. Then we got into discussing about how in 2050 we will have the technology to allow a person to be able to live forever. I thought it was absurd. I couldn't believe it and I don't think it will happen. BUT, the reason why I've changed my mind about living forever is because of the fact that once we have this advanced technology, it is predicted that people will just be mushed together into singularity and that everyone will be just one conscious. I cannot live a life like that. I love individuality and uniqueness and this is how our lives currently are. I don't want to be labeled as a "concept". "One person". Psh. No.

I think there is a reason for everything that happens in life. It is a constant chain reaction. There is a reason why we die. So I just feel that it would be wrong to have the capability of living forever when that's not the purpose of life.

Connection: Humanities to Psychology

So far, a quarter of the school year (in addition to a couple of weeks) has passed -- which means that there are only 3 quarters left of high school!! However, this year is not a bundle of joy as everyone makes it seems. Yes the school year as a whole is great, but the work part isn't that great. My schedule is so full that I don't even have a lunch this year! I'm taking soo many classes, but all these classes are informative and I feel like many of them intertwine and connect to each other -- such as Humanities and AP Psychology.

While I'm taking these two courses, I constantly see connections between the two. If I learn something from psych, the same concept comes up a couple of periods later in Humanities class.

For example, when I learning about the brain and all it's structures and functions, my teacher, as well as the textbook, mentioned that "the brain is like a computer." In other words, the functions of the brain are similar to those of a computer; storing information, deleting "files", updating our "hard-drive", taking external information from an outside source and interpreting that information, and the like. However, when we discussed this concept in Humanities, my teacher from that class completely disagreed with that metaphor. He claims that the brain and a computer are two completely different, separate things and that those two concept are clearly not the same.

Currently we're reading and discussing about the book Sophie's World in Humanities class and the majority of the book is consisted of philosophy. And even though a lot of these ideas are about the purpose of life, in psychology class we're discussing about consciousness. These two things might be different concepts of each other, but they both lead to an enigma of why humans are placed on earth and what happens in the afterlife. Psychologists haven't discovered where the conscious derives from our body and philosophers aren't 100% sure if there is a spirit separate from the body. This is one of the unanswered questions both philosophers and psychologists are still trying to figure out and they won't give up anytime soon.

I like the fact that I'm taking both Humanities and AP Psychology this year because not only do I learn about one idea, fact, or concept twice, but I receive the opportunity of learning these topics in two completely different perspectives.

Best of Today: School

Every time I walk into Mr. Allen's Humanities class, there's no way that I can walk out of that class without learning something new. One day we would be talking about vertical listening and apply it to songs that we would listen to, and the next we would discuss about what kind of graph does life follows. Today, however, I learned an interesting fact about the history of educational institutions (a.k.a. school).

As a class we were discussing on how Socrates discusses about philosophy to the public rather than lecturing it. And then Mr. Allen goes on by asking the question of why do teachers lecture students during school. Eventually, Mr. Allen tells us the whole story of why schools were established in the first place: The reason why school starts at a certain time, why we have scheduled classes, why we have bells in the beginning and end of every class, why we have lunch breaks is all because of the fact that back then, Western society wanted to train us to be well qualified factory workers. I was utterly shocked when I heard about it and then it clearly all made sense to me. Mr. Allen went on by saying that society didn't want us children to be working in such harsh conditions in factories, so were else were they supposed to put them other than school where they can train them to become great factory workers.

Now I'm glad that schools don't function that way anymore. Yes we still have to start/end at a particular time, have scheduled classes, hear the bell ring at 5 minute intervals and the like, but we have so much more freedom including in the school year. Freshman year may not have been as laid-back, but senior year definitely is more relaxed by choosing your own courses that you want to participate in. Also, with have this freedom of choice, one is allowed to explore different fields of creativity. And from then on, you are able to choose WHATEVER career you want to partake in and become whatever person you want to become in YOUR future.