Ignorance in Bliss

Thank you, Destiny Diaz.  I took a comment I was going to make and turned into a post.

I'm probably one of the most happiest people (is that right?) you could come across. I didn't consider The Happiness Advantage because I knew this. I know how to be happy. It's effortless. The times I'm only unhappy is when something discourages me or challenges my joy for even a moment- I push myself into a mood and try my hardest to keep it consistent. But the world around me, God bless, always has something to giggle at or smile about, and I'm a sucker for it. I can't stay upset unless I really truly try. That may be a small personality trait or some crazy science or that may just be the fact that I haven't trained myself to be forced into unhappiness enough to be perfect at it.

But, coming back full circle to Destiny's post about her drive for success over her happiness, that may just be the difference between myself and those of you that chose The Happiness Advantage. I chose Outliers because I wanted to learn if there was a way for me to find success in my life without obsessing over it, and Destiny and others like her most likely chose The Happiness Advantage because they wanted to find out if somewhere in their obsession for success they would find happiness. I told myself in Middle School I was to be in some kind of leadership position. I was to take majority honors classes and join Mariners or Journalism, but I chose to be happy instead, because that's what I prefer, Now I find myself casually wondering if I'll even be accepted to a college of choice because I'm not at my best, and Destiny just made a post telling us she's unsure whether she's capable of being entirely happy herself. There's a line between what you want you want and what you need that I can't seem to find. B's, C's, and a broad smile may be enough for the time being, but I can only hope future regret doesn't ruin it for me.

Now I have to try and finish an Academic Genre because this weekend I chose to pause my work to watch my dad dance to awkward music, and rather than learning the appropriate format for multi- voiced arguments, I chose to giggle at him. Ignorance is momentary bliss.

AF: Playing With Perception

Worth every moment of your time:

REVISED AND CORRECTED: Record of Assignment: Quality and Sufficiency in AP English Language

I accidentally posted a draft before.   Here is my revised version of this post.

Here is a way to think about the Record  of Assignment grades.

10/10 (plus) means the work is complete and professionally presented, but more than that, it demonstrates a mind a work.  It is thoughtful, thorough and reflective with attention to detail.  It meets or exceeds the expectations outlined by the teacher.

8/10 (check plus) demonstrates thoughtful consideration for the most part but is lacking in ONE of the following ways:  limited or shallow response, did not follow directions, crafted as though merely answering a series of questions, or improper format; presentation is shoddy.

6/10 (check) demonstrates some consideration but is lacking in MORE THAN ONE of the following ways:  limited or shallow response, did not follow direction, crafted as though merely answering a series of questions, or improper format; presentation is shoddy.

Odd numbers (9, 7, 5) allow me to express nuance.  I use the odd numbers to show that an assignment is RISING -- a 7 is a better 6, not a worse 8; a 9 is a rising 8, not a falling 10.  A 10 is a 10.

I will discuss the "5" in a moment.

Let's look at an example: Questions 5 & 6 on the Weekend Essay cover sheet were "What is the quality of your connection between the claim and the evidence?  Is the evidence clear? Specfic? Sufficient? "

Here is one answer:
"The quality of connection between my claim and evidence is very consistent throughout each of my essays it isn't spectacular in all of them but it does get the job done
In most cases the evidence is clear and sufficient but in a couple of my essays I think I did a better job than what I did in the other two."

Here is another:
"In all of my essays, I believe my evidence and my claim were well connected.  This is because in each of my claims, I briefly mentioned the evidence I would be using the support my claim. Although I don't know if this is the best way to write a thesis, the strategy does help me keep my ideas organized and keeps me from drifting off topic.  Also, I referred back to my claim frequently in explaining how the evidence I gave supports my claims.
I believe most of my evidence was specific and sufficient.  In Dear Boy, I liked how I smoothly incorporated quotes into the essay to support my claim; however, my explanation of how some of these quotes support my claim was a bit confusing.  I know what I was trying to say in my head, but transferring my ideas from preexistence to birth resulted in a lack of clarity. In King Lear, my essay did not have this problem of unclear explanations.  My evidence included very specific examples that supported my claim. In this essay, my evidence was specific and was used less awkwardly, but I don't believe it was sufficient.  I struggled coming up with good examples from literature of wealth corrupting or not corrupting the judicial system.  In my Gandhi essay, I believe I did a great job using specific and sufficient evidence.  My evidence effectively supported my claim. I also believe my evidence was good in my Susan Sontag essay.  I felt my evidence really helped to support my claim sufficiently.  Some of my evidence was specific, but I believe I could have given a bit more specific examples in this essay.  Overall, my use of evidence steadily improved from Dear Boy to Susan Sontag, so I guess that more practice writing essays is helping me."

As you can see, this represents a wide range of response.  Both writers struggled with naming the bits of evidence that they saw as specific and sufficient, but as a reader, I have a much better idea of how to help writer #2 than I do writer #1.  Can you see that?  The second writing sample gives me much more to think about and work with, and the writing itself demonstrates command of a variety of sentence forms.


About the "5":  it is a failing grade given to work that is completed.  Uncompleted work is, as you must expect, a zero.  Anyway, imagine that these numbers are expressed as percentages -- because actually, they are. The  Record of Assignment category counts for zero percent in the gradebook because I want you to stop thinking about accumulating points.  I want you to think about the quality and sufficiency of the day-to-day work you complete.  Students may well will miss something here or there, so the Record of Assignment percentage will change, going up and down as these RoA assignments accumulate.  That percentage will be used to calculate your "Day-to-Day" grade, along with your personal reflection, and a conversation we have during the month of January when teacher-student conferences begin.

Hey! How did it go today?

How are you kids? Do you have a beautiful Toulmin chart all ready for me to look at?  Do you have 16 vocab words ready to check tomorrow?  I'm getting ready to write the test on the 8 words assigned.  Tell me how you're doing in the comment section.

AF: Oops! One more thing

Tomorrow in class, I want you to read Chapter 4, Synthesizing Sources, just pages 145-152.  Short!  Super short!  But important.

AF: Research Help

Browse the New York Times collection called Room for Debate.  You will not walk away from this browsing experience without a solid idea.

Malik, here's that Washington Redskin video I was talking about.  I've asked football people young and old whether the team should change the name, and many say no.  Find out why.  Find the argument, the reason.  Read as much as you can.  Don't just make up your mind and stop reading.


Here's a starting point to start looking into income inequality in America.

Net Neutrality, kids.  If I were going to write a research paper, this is what I'd pick.  Since Obama speaks in favor of net neutrality, it automatically has a whole bevy of haters.  There's been a "Defend Net Neutrality" link over there in the sidebar since summer!  -->

Do you want to peek at a few samples?  I haven't studied these so I'm not sure; however, at first glance, I'm not knocked off of my seat.  There may be a gem in here.  Take a look, and just accept these for what they are worth...first glances?  Idea generators?

OK, I'm out.  I have a bunch of other stuff to do.

AF: The Vocab Post

We need to start working "eight-plus-eight" -- every time I give you eight words, you find eight words of your own, using the same source.  Find words you do not have command of.  Perhaps you've seen the word; perhaps you even understand what it means — but you don't OWN it.  You never say it, and you never use it in your writing.  Those are the eight you choose.  And of course, you can ALWAYS pick a word that is just downright mysterious: never seen it, never heard it, never said it.

So here are the eight I chose from Chapter 3 in Language of Composition:  

vitriolic (82); tenets (84); zero-sum game (not sure of page#); belies (93); dichotomy (101); disenfranchise (104); syllogism (118); despot (123)

Where are your eight?  I do not know, but they are somewhere between pages 81-139 and I'll be looking for them when I check vocab on Friday.

I see interesting words that fit that category I was describing above -- words that are familiar, but that we don't use or own easily and naturally, like "conjure" or "tailspin" or "concede" or "veracity."  Stretch a little.  Don't pick words that are already safely in your working vocabulary.

Kids, I miss you. Get to work.

I don't have anything against Thinking Maps!  I don't!  I think they're fine.  Maybe even wonderful.   In fact, today I learned how to apply the multiflow map to consider the difference between induction and deduction.  Remember that?  I suggested that you draw triangles. Nothing wrong with that, but the multiflow maps work better.

Anyway.  I miss you guys.  I'd rather be talking to you during this rather dicey time in our project. YOUR IDEA HAS TO GEL THIS WEEK, if it has not already.  Some of you look fine, like you are ready to begin, whereas others still seem a little lost at sea.  I wish I were with you to help you figure this out.  I'll write two more quick posts after this one:  one on vocab, one on research help and ideas.

So FIRST, I want you to work on your Toulmin Chart.  You should have received a handout today, right? Flip back to page 125 in Chapter 3 of Language of Composition in case you need a little deeper review of Toulmin.  This chart is going to help you understand and refine your argument -- once you have that worked out, you are ready to begin writing.

On FRIDAY (vocab quiz day), on a clean piece of printer paper, have your research question expressed as ONE or TWO concise English sentences (your headline, so to speak), with the Toulmin chart below,  filling the rest of the page, and filled with information -- the data, the claim, the warrants (aka the assumptions), the backing, qualifiers, and rebuttals.  Don't get all hung up on beauty.  Fill the chart with information.  I'm looking for AP work -- charts that are organized and thoughtful, speculative, dense, curious.  I want to see a mind at work -- not perfunctory "fill in the blank" kind of papers.  Honestly, think deeply about your topic.  Try to move beyond the superficial, the obvious, the beat-to-death.  Study your stasis notes.

NEXT, let's get into this even more deeply.  Once your chart is complete, look closely at the argument you intend to make, and write a 500-word draft (more or less) expressing some aspect of your argument in one of the ACADEMIC genres -- have it TYPED, and in class on Monday.  (NOT Friday, like the board said.  That's too quick)  Write something.  Make somebody care.  Make somebody understand.

ALSO, START your WORKS CITED page NOW.  Do not save this until the end.  Set up a Works Cited page according to MLA rules, and start filling it in.  Every time you find an article or source you are going to use, get it on that works page.  YOU MUST HAVE SIX legitimate sources, at minimum.

KEEP IN MIND THAT research means READING -- reading alertly, reading broadly, and reading a ton -- more than you intend to use.  If you tallied up all of your reading minutes, you should be somewhere over the 300 mark.  LEARN SOMETHING NEW.  Teach us something new as you write.  Don't just regurgitate a bunch of stuff...help us see your topic with new eyes.

PRINT OUT ONE article that you intend to use as a source.  Annotate it, and bring it in.  Watch the video I posted here called "Paperslide Précis" and get ready to craft one of these.

TUESDAY and FRIDAY of next week, we will be in the computer lab, working -- researching, crafting our researched pieces of writing.

Paperslide Précis

OMG kids, Net Neutrality

This is a really big deal, and it's all over the news.   Is your topic a dud?  Jump on this one!

Is it age or opportunity?

     Hi guys! This post was inspired by Kristine's post "Talent or Age?" where she talked about Malcolm Gladwell's theory that the month you are born in is key to your success, mainly because the older you are, the more experience you have and the better you perform. While I see the logic behind this argument, I'm still hesitant to believe that age is more important than opportunity because my own experiences tell me otherwise.
     Born on November 18, 1998, I was put into school a year earlier than I should have been (I went in the 2003-04 school year, even though I was born past the recommended September deadline). I have always been one of the youngest in our grade, finally turning 16 while most other people will be turning 17, and yet, most of the time, I don't think it really holds me back. Yes, it sucks that I can't drive or get a job yet, but I don't feel like it has held me back in academics at all. I'd like to think that because we had similar opportunities, I was able to mature at the same rate as everyone else. In fact, I sometimes think that the only reason I feel so determined to do good in school is because I've spent my whole life trying to show that my age doesn't hold me back.
    I'd always try to keep my age a secret from my teachers because every once in a while, I'd have a teacher that treat me differently because of it. There were times in Jacobsma's class where he would call me out as the "baby" of the group, especially before watching videos or saying things that younger students might not have known or understood. A few weeks ago, when Garvin found out I was still 15, she was shocked, and now every time my age is mentioned, she gives me this weird "I know something that you don't" smile. Despite the fact that teachers automatically assumed I would have a harder time understanding certain things because of my age, it just made me more determined to learn.   Being surrounded by older people didn't hurt me: it helped me. There were times when I would stay up all night studying for a test just because I wanted to get the same grades as the older kids, or when I would ask my close friends about certain social and cultural references that i didn't really understand, both because of my age and my protective parents. So yes, sometimes I would have to put in a little extra effort to understand things, but if I was surrounded by people who were younger than me and didn't have to put in any effort, would that be any better?
     All in all, despite the assumption that my age would have a negative effect on my education, I feel that my age didn't matter much at all. I was still in the same classes as everyone else, learning the same material, being offered the same help and opportunities, and in the end, it comes down to how hard I'm willing to work, the same way it does for all of you. Being younger doesn't make me dumber the same way being older doesn't automatically make you smarter. So in this case, I think Gladwell's argument was more of a hasty generalization (I finally get to use one of the argument terms we learned!) based off of one hockey team.

What do you guys think? Does it depend on what type of talent or skill we're talking about (academics, sports, artistic ability)? Or does it just depend on the person?

Once again. sorry for the really long post, and I hope some of you actually make it all the way through it :)

-Lina :)

Research Idea: Science and Faith

Today Bill Nye the Science Guy is going after Creationism on Madeline Brand's radio show, Press Play.  He objects strongly to junk science taught in schools as a plausible alternative theory to evolution.  How do we reconcile science and our religious faith?

Research Idea: "Still work to be done in education funding"

Still work to be done in education funding, by Jose L. Cruz, Cal State Fullerton
It has been nearly six years since President Barack Obama publicly prioritized college  completion as a means to improve economic competition and more than eight years since Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings' Commission on the Future of Higher Education called on policymakers to "address the needs of higher education in order to maintain social mobility and a high standard of living."
...Persistently low degree completion rates, particularly among low-income students and students of color, continue to limit social mobility, and in the process, threaten our nation's competitiveness.
By age 24, for example, young people from the bottom income quartile are seven times less likely to have a bachelor's degree than those families in the top quartile, and we rank near the bottom in the developed world in educational attainment of  our young people when compared against that of their parents...

See this article in its entirety in the November 5 edition of the Orange County Register, in the CAL STATE FULLERTON section of the paper.

Society, Success, and You

     This post won't be directly about any one of the books but instead, a general theme that I've seen in blog posts and in the book club readings.

      It seems that everyone the blog wants to be happy and successful.  Actually, almost everyone in the world wants to be happy and successful in their life; I don't think anyone except for a sociopath would actively strive for a depressing and unsuccessful life.

     Firstly, who or what defines success?  I think that most people look towards society to see how success is defined.  When we think of success, things that come to mind are a satisfying career, money, power, a happy life, and good relationships with those you care about.  These vary from person to person but for the most part we share similar ideas of success.  From a evolutionary perspective, success is surviving and successfully creating healthy offspring that will live on to carry your genes.  The want to raise healthy offspring is embedded into the human mind; it can be seen in our parents.  Most of our parents told us to get good grades and to work hard in school so we can go to a high valued college.  Getting into a good college would supposedly result in a good career and a happy life.  Then after that, you are supposed to get married and have children who are also successful.

      However, I am willing to bet that most students' main motivation in school is not to raise a family.  We want to do well in school and in life because it has been taught to us that being unsuccessful is bad and shameful.  No one looks down on the rich or heads of corporations; the homeless and low end job workers are looked down on.  People point to the homeless and say, "Do well in school or you will end up like that." Now we are afraid to fail; we don't want to be looked down upon with shame.

     Some people may say, "Why aren't I happy with all this hard work and trying to be successful?"  I think many people feel unhappy because they are not trying to be successful for themselves, but for society instead.  If you truly wanted to be successful for yourself, then doing hard work in school and challenging yourself as much as possible would bring you satisfaction instead of annoyance.  When getting an A in a class feels more like doing a chore than completing a challenge, it would make one unhappy.  I believe most of these different mindsets try to change your view of the problem instead of facing the problem itself.

      

      I guess my point is if you want to be happy then you should truly want to be successful for yourself and not just pile on the work and activities to please your parents or other people.

Tldr; Do you truly want to be successful for yourself?

I didn't want to write that much, but I'm pretty sure I'm one of the last people to post for the book club thing and I didn't want to end it with a rushed post. Congrats if you made it through the wall of text. I'll be going now. Bye! AHH WERE ALL GONNA DIE!!@!@! dafsafxcvdfmyschelf

Gene-Environment Correlation

In the Genius in All of Us  David Shenk pushes the importance that our knowledge and intelligence comes from genes times environment. They both contribute to our ways of learning and helps develop us since we were young. Shenk stated that the environment shapes our perspective and take on life just as much as genes do. He uses examples of people in the story that grew up in different environments to distinguish differences that environment can affect someone. Shenk put a lot of emphasis on the genes*environment (gxe) idea in the book so it brought up some questions I had reading the book:

Will GxE affect us our whole lives or will it eventually wear off when we grow older?

What are ways that we can improve children's learning to be similar without changing their environments?

How much does the environment affect the learning of children?

Overall thoughts on Genes times Environment idea?

Happy pappy (:

I strongly suggest The Happiness Advantage  by Shawn Achor. The book provides a system of changing daily actions to ensure a happier mindset. One of the main things Achor makes emphasis on is the fact that success comes only when one is happy and not vice versa. Society has always told us that one must be succesful to obtain happiness. For example, if your goal is to get a perfect score on that next test you have and you tell yourself that you'll be happy if you achieve that, you may be happy for a few hours or so but the happiness won't last. Many studies have shown that students and adults work better when they are happy or surrounded by happy things.

Whenever I read this book, it never fails to put me in a good mood. It makes me want to be happy and dance around in a field of flowers. I thought I was the only one that felt like this, but that changed the first time my book club got together because they said the same thing! It gave us all a positive outlook on things. I would definitely suggest reading this outstanding book! 

Talent or Age?

Malcom Gladwell's book, Outliers, focuses on the famous and intelligent, explaining how it is not really talent that helps one achieve and succeed beyond others, but rather factors such as when they were born. Hockey for example - just as schools have a cut-off to determine whether someone is too old or too young to be in a certain grade, the same applies to sports.

Hockey's cut-off is in December. The older a person is, the more physically and mentally mature they are. Studies show that out of twenty-two players on a team, the majority of the team was born towards the beginning of the year, while only two players were born in November and December. Those born in January were the eldest, meaning that they had the more prominent positions, while the younger ones were at a disadvantage. When drafting new players, those born farther away from the first quarter of the year have basically no chance at making the team. It is not talent, but the date of birth.

Oh hey, I was born in January. Just kidding, I know nothing about hockey. Anyways.

This section of the book really made me question whether or not it was the hard work someone put in, or factors such as these which enable someone to achieve the positions they have received. It was extremely interesting, and I recommend that others read it as well.

Mindset...

 I am reading the book mindset and I honestly don't think it is that great. The book is about Carol Dweck's belief that there are two mindsets: a growth and a fixed mindset. The growth mindset means that in your mind you aren't failing you just hope to learn something new and you want to know how to fix whatever you did wrong. Fixed mindset, on the other hand, means you don't try to improve, you only want to hear about what you did right. The mistakes or a way to fix them is not important to someone with a fixed mindset. Dweck basically goes on talking about the mindsets and showing examples of them, and she kind of tells how you can fix it too, but she shows favouritism towards the growth mindset. She says that a growth mindset is the best because it will help you improve in anything.

Overall the book is very repetitive and it is not one of my favorite reads because like I said she just talks about the two mindsets over and over and since she prefers the growth mindset over the fixed mindset, she talks about its good characteristics and not the good points of a fixed mindset.

Mindset. Mindset. Mindset.

So far Mindset by Carol S. Dweck is an okay book.  From my understanding, Dweck states that there are two types of mindsets, the fixed mindset and the growth mindset.  If one has a fixed mindset they don't accept failure and don't see it as experience.  If one has a growth mindset, they accept failure and allow it to make new goals.

In my honest opinion, Dweck seems to have a big bias towards the growth mindset.  She makes it seem as if it's better than the fixed mindset. She doesn't point out the benefits of the fixed mindset and the unbeneficial factors of the growth mindset.  As an addition she is extremely repetitive. Se basically states her theory about the mindsets and apply it to various examples throughout the book.

Third Mindset

In the book Mindset Carol Dweck talks about two specific mind sets ,growth mind set and fixed mind set. She pretty much says one is good and one is bad. This makes me very angry because the world is not black and white or good or evil, there are gray spots and more than two possible things. She makes growth mind seem perfect ,while fixed is something to be unwanted. Why can't Someone be successful with a fixed mindset? Just because someone is set in their ways doesn't make them less likely to be successful. She even says people can possess qualities of both ,so in a sense everyone just has different mind sets and there are not just two in the world. If everyone has mix , then there should be more than just two possibility  there could be infinite.

Be Happy!!!

The Happiness Advantage is a definitely a must read. As cheesy and cliche as it sounds, this book has enlightened me to be a better and happier person. I remember the first day of book club, we all came in overflowing with happiness like a bunch of hippies. We were all just so excited about adopting the idea of happiness equalling success. It makes you wonder when we as humans adopted the concept of success equalling happiness. If there isn't a definite definition of success then how can there be a definite definition of happiness. As long as we continue to move from one goal to the next, we'll never truly reach pure happiness. We've had the key to success right under our noses and we didn't see it.

In Mindset by carol defogger, she excessively talked about wanting people to have a growth mindset. She used different scenarios to display her message but continued to sound repetitive. I feel that there it would be beneficial to have an even mix of both mindset. It was a good book, but was too repetitive.

True Success

After watching the video in class of Shawn Achor speaking about his book, I was eager to read the book, not only after witnessing his wonderful sense of humor but just by how relatable everything he said was.
Growing up, I've always been taught that school was number one. If I got straight A's and took rigorous classes and played sports and did all these other activities that I'd be successful. I'd get into a good college and get a good career and live a happy life. And although this is all pretty much true, I've found myself pretty unhappy through this journey of high school. Not all the time, of course. But all the late night studying after a concert or race or piles of homework from each class makes me want to scream. I always think "I need to do this to be successful. I need to finish." I never ask myself "Am I happy?"
Basically, what he is trying to get through to us is that if you decide to live your life positively and try to make room for your own happiness, then that's when you'll truly be successful.

The Average

     My choice book for book club was The Happiness Advantage.  Honestly, this book had wanted me to change my life.  After reading it, it started changing my view on the world.  Trust me, if you read this book, you will be pretty happy for a while.  It just teaches you the proper way to live life, and I am so thankful for it.  The first page talks about how everyone thinks that if you work hard, you'll be successful, and if you're successful, then you'll be happy.  Shawn Achor, the author, then bluntly states how that formula is broken.  He states that if your happy, then success will come, and that really changed my perspective on life.  There is a true advantage to happiness.
      One part that really hit me was right at the beginning of the book.  After getting a few pages into it, there comes a part where Achor talks about a time he was invited to speak in Africa.  When he was there, he spoke at a school, and when he asked them how many of them liked to do school-work, about 95% raised their hand.  He was surprised, as was I, to why they enjoyed school-work.  They said that it was because they saw it as a privilege, one that many of their parents did not have.  After reading this, it really affected the way I viewed school.  I mean, yes, I am always going to be stressed and worried about school, but now, I try to never look at it like a burden.  I think we all need to realize just how lucky we are to have all these privileges that so many people don't have.  Achor even did a study that proved those who had a positive mindset to excel were to do just that.  Maybe if I were more positive about school and saw it as a privilege to be learning, I will do better than I am now.  It's an experiment definitely worth trying.
     As the book goes on, it's all just about positive outlooks on life and ways to achieve happiness.  I needed this book so much and I am so thankful to have read it.

Fifty Oranges

Hey, everyone! After we saw Malcolm Gladwell's TED talk during class, the book I wanted to read was Outliers. However, as books were being picked, I ended up being stuck with The Genius in All of Us by David Shenk. I have since come to terms with my previous bad luck because The Genius in All of Us was a great book and an eye-opener with how I look at individual talent and potential.

One passage that stuck a chord with me the most was in Chapter Two: Intelligence Is a Process, Not a Thing. It discusses how during the late 1800s and early 1900s, arguments that successful people, usually privileged whites, were gifted with superior biology lacked any solid proof, so in an attempt to solve this problem (and make up proof), Charles Spearman, a British psychologist and statistician, devised mathematical formula based on "a correlation between school marks, teachers' subjective assessments, and peers' assessments of 'common sense,'" to measure intellectual skills of an individual. After reading about his formula to measure intellect, I was reminded of the mathematical formula used for rating poetry in the 1989 film, Dead Poets Society. Just as creativity cannot be accurately measured through a mathematical formula, neither can an individual's intellectual capacity.

Spearman's work is a precursor to the revision of the IQ test and the National Intelligence Test, itself a precursor to the SAT of today. The revisers of the IQ test recommended that "anyone scoring less than 100 be automatically disqualified from any prestigious position. To automatically dismiss the worth of anyone scoring below 100 was to mistake relative value for absolute value. It was like saying that, out of any one hundred oranges, fifty are never going to taste very good."

I thought about how ridiculous it was that there was a formula to determine how smart someone is based on how well an individual performed on tests and how their teachers saw them, and then it hit me, that's the simplified version of how we get into college.

Happiness Leads to Success

Hi guys, so I honestly have never heard of positive psychology until I read Happiness Advantage. Basically it’s a new field of applied psychology that has researched and tested various principles which overall showed that people perform better at work as they raised their level of happiness. Their research showed that no matter how old you are, it’s possible to change your behavior by the modification of even the simplest part of your life. I personally chose this book because after watching the video that Ms. Fletcher showed us, I was interested in how I can change my outlook on life, be happy, and become more productive. I realized that these past few years, I haven't exactly been happy with myself and school in general. I love learning but I don't love the stress that I am constantly under because it drives me crazy and makes me just want to give up and not work. I agree with a comment Sarah made earlier that you have to find balance in your life. You cant always be stressed and working but you can't also be carefree all the time.

 

While the Happiness Advantage certainly made me see things differently, I began to realize that it’s harder to actually do than just say. It’s difficult to be positive when our environment and society is pretty negative, and optimistic people are probably endangered species. My only request for you, my fellow peers, is to start thinking more positively so we can spread it like wildfire and be happy because according to this book, how we behave and act greatly influences each other.

Anyway, The Happiness Advantage principle calls for us to retrain our brains to focus on the positive side of things which can then help us by improving our productivity and performance. Another is called The Fulcrum and the Lever that states that with the movement of our fulcrum (mindset) in the right way, we can exert more power when moving the lever (our potential power and possibility we think we have. The Tetris Effect explains that we are able to train our brains to look for positive patterns and seize opportunities whenever possible. My favorite one is probably the 20-Second Rule because it reminded me that smaller tasks that are easier to achieve is a great place  to start when one is trying to begin a habit.

Overall, I do not regret choosing this book because I enjoyed it and it has taught me many valuable lessons that would definitely help me to become a better student and a better person who has a generally positive vibe and does work effectively. I guess the real success in life isn’t what your house or job is someday, it’s about how you lived it and whether you were genuinely happy. Thank you for your time. (:

Achor's Seven Principles

The book I choose to read for the book clubs was The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor. Right in the beginning, Achor tells us that happiness is not fueled by success but that it is the other way around: happiness fuels success. I was a bit skeptical at this claim because I knew that whenever I did achieve success on a goal I was working on, I felt proud and happy at my accomplishment. But Achor goes on and explains that if we practice the principles of positive psychology, it will have a positive effect on our well-being and work ethic. He gives us seven positive psychology principles and explains the method and importance of each in our life. The first one is the happiness advantage. If we can retrain our brains to focus on the positive and practice other positive psychology principles, we can improve our productivity and performance. The second principle is the fulcrum and the lever. The fulcrum is our mindset and the lever is the potential that we have. If we can move our fulcrum in the right direction then we can unlock even more potential. The third principle is the tetris effect. This principle state that if we train our brains to loo for positive patterns instead of negative ones, then we can observe and seize more opportunities. Achor's fourth principle is falling up. When a person has a negative experience, they can either learn and grow from it, or sink lower. The person must be able to believe that they can turn the experience into a learning one before doing anything else. The fifth principle is the zorro circle. If we are faced with a crisis or stress, we can do little simple tasks that are manageable and the move onto the bigger issues. the sixth principle is the 20-second rule. By using twenty seconds to remove barriers, we can change our habits and behavior. The last principle is the social investment. When we try to enhance our our social relations, we can receive rewards such as and extended life span or performance improvement at work. My favorite principle is the sixth one because it is simplest principle and doesn't take much effort but it can have a lasting change on our lives. If we all tried to apply these principles to our lives, we would all see see how much potential we have and wouldn't be afraid to reach for it.

The Brain, the Environment, and You

For the first quarter Book Club activity, I involved myself in the group that read The Genius in All of Us: New Insights Into Genetics, Talent, and IQ by David Shenk. This book was very interesting. One of the very first things I noted about the book was the illustration on the cover: a man with his head tipped off like an ignited lighter. The illustration seemed to express the ideal of the ego for the human brain, and how the brain is "ignited" by knowledge and or intelligence. Aside from the illustration, one of Shenk's ideals in the book provided an interesting outlook on the development of the human brain: the environment and how it affects our intellectual development process.

The title The Genius in All of Us suggests the potential of a higher standard of intelligence for every single human being. Shenk takes into account how the environment serves as factors to how this development progresses. The "environment" we speak of isn't just the physicality of the surroundings, but also involves the status of the environment [in a modern sense, this includes examples such as the economy, varying relationships (parental influence in particular), etc). Simply, the setting surrounding the individual as a whole, reaching to even the smallest aspects of the environment. According to Shenk, and this makes sense on its own as well, states that when a child is growing up, the environmental factors the child endures causes them to change, developing their minds and physical self to adapt to support themselves. My question to this is, "If we planned to change/overhaul the entire educational environment we have now, what conditions would need to be met so that we, as developing human beings, achieve the highest learning standard possible? What changes to the environment will allow us to obtain" This question was just based off my own interest, if anyone was wondering.

Oh, and on the back of the book, New York Magazine quoted the book as "A thinking man's Outliers." So I am now probably going to check out Outliers myself.

The Road to Success

     Parents teach their children early on that they need to work hard and become something in life so that they can be happy. My parents have always pushed me to take hard classes and join sports or other activities that could help me get into college so that I could get a job and be happy. After watching the video on positive psychology in class, I felt compelled to read The Happiness Advantage for book club. In the video, Shawn Achor mentioned that work and success doesn't make someone happy; happiness makes a person successful. I didn't really understand what he meant so I chose the book to find out. The concept wasn't clear at first, but as I continued to read, I realized I wasn't really happy and that Achor was right. 
      All I do is stress out about school and homework. With Showtime and cross-country, I feel like I'm always rushing to get my work done. I don't sleep and whenever I finish one thing there is always something else. Always some essay or lab or worksheet or test. I put myself through all the stress in hopes of a brighter and happier future, but none of my success and progress at this time make me happy right now. No matter what i always tell myself I can do better and am never satisfied.  If success can't make me happy now, what will be the difference ten years from now? 
      Achor addresses this in the book. It is human nature to always want more; we are never truly satisfied with anything. So how can I be happy and successful?
      The answer is in the title of the book: The Happiness Advantage. Shawn Achor explains in the book that success is an advantage of being happy. Happiness precedes success and he provides seven steps to help achieve happiness. He says that we must surround ourselves with positives meaning positive people and positive energy. Happiness isn't about lying to ourselves like most of us do, but it's training our brains to find a way to rise above obstacles. Scan the world for opportunities and acknowledge the good in your life. Turn bad habits into good ones and invest in social relationships. My favorite principle was The Zorro Circle because it's all about control. According to Achor, thinking you are in control is a big motivator. he says you should focus on small manageable tasks so that eventually you can face the bigger problems without being overwhelmed. 
     Basically, you need to be willing to invest time in your happiness. Shawn Achor's method can work if you the right amount of effort into it. I strongly recommend this book, especially since this year has proved to be stressful with all the AP classes and pressures of college.

The Real Value of Your IQ

In David Shenk's The Genius in All of US he discusses the misunderstandings involving IQ tests.  He discusses how one's IQ results are not set in stone as it may fluctuate on one important factor which is environment. Whether it be home, historical, work, different parenting styles, or school, environment plays a large factor in one's ability to score highly on and IQ test.  Within the environment, a direct correlation was discovered concerning a communities overall isolation.  Communities with a higher degree of cultural isolation tended to score lower on IQ test than communities with a low level of cultural isolation.  A city in Virginia was used as an example where the community was very isolated, illiteracy was high, and access to schools, radios, newspapers, and other ways of distributing news and information were very limited.  At the age of six, children were achieving average scores but as they grew older and lived through isolation their test scores continued to drift further below that of the nation average.  An even stranger phenomenon occurred when it appeared through IQ test scores that the newer generation is getting smarter than the previous and older generations.  The reason for this was that the environment of the previous generation had not required them to perform at the same rate we do in our generation.  According to Shenk, "Children develop only as the environment demands development" and due to our new environment we are unknowingly being pushed to achieve higher scores on our IQ tests.

Achieving Happiness

Hello everyone, I have been reading Shawn Anchor’s The Happiness Advantage, I found this book to be extremely fascinating it didn’t feel like I was reading a how to achieve happiness in your life guide. Shawn Anchor had a way of grasping his reader by using humor,stories, and tone to get his points across. Shawn mentions that in today’s society we are taught that if you are successful you will in fact achieve happiness but when you are not happy you might just be hurting your chances of success. Shawn Anchor also mentions that once you achieve success, you will never have your fill, you will find new goals to achieve and never truly become happy. I recommend you read this book it makes you realize what is standing in your way of happiness, every second you read you are finding a key to happiness. 

It is the Little Things

      Reading The Happiness Advantage made me realize that I was not truly happy myself. I, like most of you reading this was stressed out very often with school and life in general. I was constantly worried about my grades and my future. As soon as I would get a good grade on a test or assignment, I would just focus on what was next. My mindset was that doing good in school would lead to a better future/job. Yet throughout all of this I never really felt happy, I just felt like a zombie mindlessly going through the motions. Once I realized that I was not happy myself, I decided to change the way I lived my life. Sure a good job and lots of money are great, but money can not buy happiness. Now I do not worry as much about school, I just focus on making myself and the people around me happy. I never take the little things for granted, whenever an opportunity to have fun presents itself I embrace it with open arms. Cause when your life is all said and done it will not be about the money or the hard work ethic as material things will eventually fade. All that will matter is whether or not you made the best of your life by making yourself and the people around you happy as can be. Those people you have a positive effect on will make sure your legacy never fades.

7 Debatable Steps

     In The Happiness Advantage Shawn Achor criticizes the mindset that society possesses. He states that in today's world we see things in only one light, the negative one. We are constantly bombarded by tasks and responsibilities that carry weight and stress. All of these components combined force us to follow a mindset of extreme urgency and unbalance. We strive to reach the target or quota in front of us and when we reach it instead of settling, we try to pursue a higher accolade. Also while we're doing this we're not happy. He criticizes how people follow the straight path of getting that raise or completing that essay in order to be happy. At the end of that we aren't happy but instead restart the cycle for a new goal.

     In his arguments he provides "The Seven Principles" in which he outlines how we can change that formula. Some of these include taking things step by step, altering your mindset to a positive one, and being able to fail but turn that into a positive. Within our table discussions we broke these down to their messages and purposes. The overall tone of the group was doubt. Achor's argument makes a valid point on many levels but it seems as if his solution is a little obvious. His statistics made me believe him when he said that those who work with a positive mindset create a better product. However the methods he gave us created a sense that this was another self-help book that was similar to the others. Other things like the piece by piece concept added to this feeling. Of course we take things step by step. We've been taught from our childhoods to do this, brick by brick, step by step. His other point is the "falling up" concept. When we fail we automatically focus on what just happened, the failure, but we eventually come to grips with it and learn from it. In my opinion some of the concepts in his book amalgamate into a refresher-course instead of a message to promote enlightenment. 
 

May the Opportunities Be Ever In My Favor

   I chose Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell, because I wanted to know how the most intelligent and successful people came to be. I have monumental plans for my future career and I hoped that the answer to my success would be in this book. Boy, was I wrong. I could not help but feel depressed and discouraged in the beginning chapters. Though he acknowledged that lots of hard work was essential for success, such as 10,000 hours of practice, he convincingly proved through the lives of the world's most successful individuals that chance opportunities, date of birth and cultural upbringings far outweigh hard work. At first I was in denial; I strongly wanted to hold on to my belief that hard work is all that matters in reaching success. I did not want to be told that my hard work will go to waste simply because I did not have the perfect date of birth or lucky opportunities.

   However, I slowly started to accept the fact that there is more to success than just hard work. I have to admit, the fact that I am not in control of these factors that play a pivotal role in my life makes me nervous and doubtful about my future. I still plan to work extremely hard and put in my best effort to reach my goals, but there is still a lingering question in my head. Will life hand me the necessary opportunities to become a philanthropist, lawyer, and politician? My heart aches with despair. Everything is against me: I am a Mexican-American female who is not rich and does not have many valuable connections (yet). Nevertheless, I will not surrender myself to this unfair world so easily. Taking this new-found realization with me, I will sacrifice all that is beloved to me in order to reach the level that my already well-off counterpart is at. I will view each obstacle that I face as an opportunity and never lose track of my destination.

Culture and Success

In Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers he discusses a common stereotype that we all know: "Asians are good at math." He explains that it's not the fact that they are Asian makes them good at math, it's the fact that their culture has a strong influence on their success. For example, unlike the English language in which our number system is highly irregular, the number systems in places such as China, Japan, and Korea are more logical and regular, thus leading to Asian children being capable of learning how to count faster and to use basic functions, such as addition, more easily compared to American children. The logical number system also tends to cause Asians to find math more enjoyable and to be more willing to solve hard problems.The fact that Asian languages give a strong early advantage which, like the age advantage of hockey players as discussed in an earlier chapter, grows gradually over time and leads to success.

Another factor, is that Asian culture emphasizes hard work will lead to success. Gladwell uses the example of rice paddies to display the work ethic of Asians. He explains that in order for their rice paddy to yield a sufficient amount of rice, farmers must put in hours of hard work and concentration so that they can have enough to sell and eat. He goes on to explain that those who are able to concentrate and take the time to analyze the problem are more successful at solving problems. This ties into the 10,000 hours of practice that Gladwell discussed earlier where those that became successful practiced or studied their skill for at least this amount of time.

As it is stated in the book, "being good at math is not about having "it" or not, it is about your willingness to work hard." I do think that being good with math has to do with  hard work, but I also think that it has to also do with being born with the skill. Although hard work does really pay off, does it really work with math? Aren't there times where you try your hardest to solve a problem and you still can't figure it out? Do you think that the people that are good at math are really just born with it? Do you really think that being Asian gives people an advantage at being better at math?

Seven Steps to Bliss

In The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor, Achor presents seven special steps for providing happiness by infusing positivity in our lives, thus motivating us to get the jobs done. Of course, being a skeptic of many self-help books and a pretty harsh pessimist, I came into the book expecting to come away having learned nothing and refusing to attempt any of the author's advice. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised. Achor's seven steps are informative and backed with experiment after experiment, proving the advantages that actually come with leading a much more positive light. I still believe that thinking positively is much easier said than done, but with Achor's help, it might be possible. While I'm still a pretty bad negative thinker, I decided to try some of his methods, such as starting the day with at least five things to look forwards to, and ending it thinking about five events that went right or that made me happy. I did find that I was a bit more motivated to go to school and participate in my classes, even if I had a test or a lot of homework due.

All in all, I'm still a bit skeptic of the book and the steps that claim that they can put you ahead of the curve. However, maybe Achor is on to something. After all, everyone can use a bit more happiness in their lives, and can benefit from some kind of advantage. What about you guys? What're your thoughts on these seven steps to happiness?

The Learning Process and How It Can Be Affected

         I chose to read The Genius in All of Us by David Shenk. This book was extremely enjoyable to read because of how well it was written. If it weren't for all the homework I had every day, I would have finished this book the day I got it.

       One of the topics I found most interesting was the idea of a prime age for learning. Shenk goes into detail describing how the brain functions throughout the lifetime of the average human being. He claims that a person learns better at earlier years. Shenk goes further by staying that the specific prime age to learn is about four years old. At this age the brain is still developing, in which it can absorb the most information while also locking it into their memory. This makes total sense and It is incredible how our brains work. We all learn how to speak and fit in with others while we are young, so why not try learning other things at the same age?

        This books also talks about environments children are raised in, and how much it can affect the learning process. When a child is growing up, the surroundings they endure cause them to adapt and change in order to best fit given situations. I find this information very interesting because it makes me wonder how I could have been different if I were raised differently, as well as how my friends would be as a result of the environment as well.    Hello! If you see this text, you must bee really cool :)

The Dreaded "Comfort Zone"...

           Thanks to A.P. Psychology, it happens that I read both The Genius in All of Us and Mindsets, so I had the ability to connect to parts of both books. Personally, I liked Genius better because of the tone of the author, but that is beside the point. In both books, it is mentioned that certain children who get praised for their natural ability or in a “fixed mindset” way tend to fear rejection, and this causes them to stay within what they think is their ability. Though Mindset expands the topic more, I think Genius attacks the point better because of its emphasis on the child’s potential. Of course, I myself have a bias based on my conscious choice of Genius, so perhaps other opinions would be helpful on this matter.

            I cannot say I am immune to the dangerous but tantalizing venom of intellectual pride, and the symptoms of the poison are evident in my life. I know I am not the only one who suffers from this, but thankfully, these books offer potent cures for this psychologically numbing disease. That is the best feature of these books: their applicability, but it takes changes, hard things for people of our country.

Illusion or reality?

In the Genius in All of Us  David Shenk states that our environment could affect the way we grow up. Like clay we are molded by our environment. It’s interesting how a child could turn out to be if he were raised in a different environment. Something interesting popped into my mind though. From the moment we are born we are shaped by our environment. We are bounded by what we come to live and accept what we deem true. We all live in what we believe to be  our own reality. But what exactly is reality and truth? Is knowledge and awareness vague? Are they better yet called illusions?

I myself believe that even though we are shaped and molded by our environment, it’s up to us if we stay bounded by how we have been raised. Even if we are raised by different environments we can still choose what becomes of us no matter the circumstance. That aspect of us doesn't define who we are because as humans we are given the choice to choose what we deem true. Some cases though are different because being born into a strict, conservative family means you have no idea of your own truth rather you have one of your families. Our own individual world isn't an illusion because if it were, we would be able to manipulate it and change it to the way we wanted it to be. We wouldn't have our own set of ideals to fight for if we could change anything we wanted to without any effort.

To be or not to be... HAPPY

   Hey guys! So for book club, I chose to read The Happiness Advantage by, Shawn Achor. I found this book to be interesting though at times I didn't agree with it because I felt that you can't say to yourself "be happy" and you will. As I continued to read the novel,it made a little more sense and I understood his principles to achieve happiness. This book teaches us that we must first find happiness in our lives in order to achieve success. For many of us it seems strange because it's not what we are taught, we are taught that in order to have happiness we need to achieve our goals, strive for the best, and become successful. Anchor helped me realize that the method we have always used doesn't work because once we have it we will only want more, and I agree with that. Even if we do get the grades you had set your goals to or the job you wanted, one way or another we will find a way to want more and we will never be content, which is why I agree with Anchor's method. I recomend this book to anyone who is not sure how to be happy as they would like to because somehow it can help. Being content with what you have is key to living a positive life. And yes you can decide to be happy by surrounding yourself with positivity! Let me know what you think!
 

Ethnicity or Determination?

Throughout his book, The Genius in All of Us, David Shenk makes it clear that his message consists of the fact that talent is not a thing, but rather a process in which takes patience to develop.  On Monday after I finished running my mega-lap for PE, I was standing around to catch my breath while the basketball girls practiced nearby.   As I waited for the rest of my class to finish as well, I decided to take a seat and two girls seated next to me were having a conversation. The only exchange that I managed to hear (not that I was trying to eavesdrop) was when the African American girl mentioned to her friend,” I was going to try out for basketball… but I suck...  AND I’m Black so I’d just be a disappointment.” 

When she said this I felt sorry for her.  Little did she know that with practice, she’d probably end up just as good as the other girls, but for the obvious reasons, she seemed to believe that because of her ethnic background / genes, she should automatically be a great athlete.  Coincidentally, I had recently read about this subject in chapter six titled “Can White Men Jump?”

In this chapter, Shenk takes his time on emphasizing the fact that this concept is not true by individually numbering his main assertions:

“1. DESPITE APPEARANCES TO THE CONTRARY, RACIAL AND ETHNIC GROUPS ARE NOT GENETICALLY DISCRETE.

Skin color is a great deceive; actual genetic differences between ethnic and geographic groups are very, very limited.  “

"2. GENES DON’T DIRECTLY CAUSE TRAITS; THEY ONLY INFLUENCE THE SYSTEM.”

It is important for people to acknowledge these facts because being a certain ethnicity does NOT determine one’s performance.

I am glad I have come across this nonfiction book because it has given me factual detail on subjects I used to dismiss.  It has also given me self-confidence that I can legitimately do anything I set my mind to.

The Luck of the Calendar

In Outliers,by Malcolm Gladwell, Gladwell zeros in on the story behind success. One of the major factors that contribute to the amount of success a person has is what month they were born in. Gladwell uses rosters of sports teams to point out that the vast majority of the players on that roster were born in the first few months of the year. This is because there is a huge gap of development that occurs in children around the age of ten and the players that are lucky enough to be born in the early months have a huge advantage physically and mentally. This is the reason why many young players on Canadian Hockey teams were born in the first three months of the year and continue to get better at an exponential rate because they are the ones that recieve the best coaching. Ultimately the young hockey players are able to turn pro and become successful simply because they were born in the early months of the year:a trend that is evident in different sports worldwide.

Location, Location, Location

    I have always thought about what makes the well-accomplished and extremely successful people we all talk about highly so successful.  Of course hard work, determination, and persistence to achieve life goals comes into the equation of success.  It isn't surprising that a little bit luck is also a factor that comes into play; however, when reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, I never knew how much luck really is a factor is in the success of people such as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.  Some examples of the types of luck a person can acquire are birth dates, location, and the success of a person's parents.  Although a person's birth date is in an unchangeable fact for a person, location is changeable.  As explained in Outliers, opportunities can arise in the location a person was raised in.
    A famous example of such a person is Steve Jobs, the co founder of Apple Computers.  He wasn't born into a wealthy family, but that type of luck wasn't a factor in Job's story.  Location was. Jobs grew up in the city of Mountain View, California, which was the epicenter of Silicon Valley.  Jobs grew up in a city filled with inspiring engineers who were observing technology is a different way.  Gladwell remarked, "Jobs came of age breathing the air of the very business he would later dominate."  This was undoubtedly true since took advantage of his location in the Silicon Valley and took summer jobs in a dominating global electronic firm.    
    Gladwell's thoughts about location being a factor to a person's success had me thinking about my own life.  What opportunities would have arisen had I been born into a rich, upper class family?  Would I have become enthralled in engineering had I grew in the Silicon Valley, like Steve Jobs?

What are your thoughts on location being a key factor in success? 

Thing to Know to Be Successful

     The book that I chose to read is the Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. Before I picked this book up I thought that it would reveal some secrets on how to be really successful in life. It does. Like I never knew that doing an activity for 10,000 hours or more results in you being an expert in it. However Gladwell mentioned a lot of other factors that also contribute to one's success. For example there is the year one is born, the surrounding they grew up in, and the opportunities that they are given. He writes it in a way that makes you think that you can not be successful unless you are born in the right time period or you live in the right community. Did anyone else feel that way while they were reading? 

Reaching For The Stars

     Having the right mindset and determination is the key to success. Mindset by Carol S. Dweck states that there are two different mindsets that people have: fixed or growth. Dweck uses many scenarios that emphasize the difference among these two. One example Dweck states is that people with a fixed mindset believes that they are better than others when they are successful. However, people with a growth mindset takes their success and stays humble with it. People with the fixed mindset would ask themselves: "If you're somebody when you're successful, what are you when you're unsuccessful".
     Although Mindset is all about having the growing mindset, I believe that we need a balance of having both a fixed and growing one. If all we have is a growth mindset, where would our limitations be? If we just have a fixed mindset, would we try to reach above and beyond our comfort standards?Where do you stand on this argument?

The importance of age

Something that Malcolm Gladwell goes into depth into in the beginning of his book is age and the month you were born in. He explains how the month you were born on affects you in so many ways. For example, if the cut off for a youth sports league is January 1st, anyone born in the beginning of the year will have a huge developmental advantages than those born at the end of the year. At a young age months makes a huge difference in maturity and because of that the older kids can become much better players than the younger ones. Then, Gladwell goes into saying how that leads to even more adavantages for them. The better players will be scouted for a more advanced team in which they will practice more and much more intensely making them much better players. Like this they leave behind the younger kids who did not get that opportunity because of their maturity and creates a huge gap between the two. As they get older the older kids will increasingly become better and better and will have a much better chance at becoming professional players. As Gladwell was saying all this he makes it sound as though the younger kids have very little chance at ever becoming professional players like the older ones.

Reading all this made me think about myself, because I am born at the end of the year and for almost everything I have always been one of the younger people. So does everything that goal say apply in the longer run?

Development and Twins

David Shenk challenges everything we have been taught about talent/intelligence and its relationship with genetics and our environment in his book The Genius in All of Us.  He claims "talent is not a thing, it's a process" and it has little to do with genetics only; instead it has to do with genetics, practice and our environment.  Shenk encourages the reader to get rid of that negative mindset that discourages us from taking risks and trying, which is the idea that people are born talented or smarter than others. Shenk also claims "children develop only as the environment demands development", which I agree with based on my own experience.  In a trip i took to Mexico two summers ago, I noticed that almost everyone had given up education (especially the men) because there were not a lot of resources and jobs that required education (and the jobs that did, only required basic knowledge).  Their lives are limited and they don't have as much opportunities as there are here. (Also, it made me think of how each individual has their own knowledge on different things based on their environment and likes/dislikes).

I found chapter four, "The Similarities and Dissimilarities of Twins", was the most interesting chapter for me.  The chapter is exactly about what the title says.  I finished reading this chapter and had one question still in my mind.  If our environments contribute to who we are, then why are siblings often so different from each other? (They don't necessarily have to be twins). Obviously they share similarities but where do the extreme differences come from?

Overall, the book was easy to follow because of the simple words he chose to use and his inclusion of the epilogue which was full of sources and helpful information.  I finished reading feeling empowered and with the determination to improve myself.

Mindset, not Mindsets

Hey guys! So I've been reading Mindset and while discussing it in class, a lot of people in my group were complaining that the author had a bias towards one of the two mindsets that she described in her book. But as I read the book, I got the feeling that it wasn't really a bias. Well I mean, it is, but not like in a bad way. During the book she talks about two types of mindsets, a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. A fixed mindset believes, among other things, that you are born with certain capacities and you can never exceed those limits no matter how hard you try. While a growth mindset believes just the opposite. A growth mindset views challenges as times where you can learn and become stronger. The author obviously prefers the growth mindset. The people in my group were saying that the author was being unfair to the other mindset and not giving equal positive and negative things about both mindsets. But that's not the point. The point is that she's trying to convince you to have a growth mindset because that's obviously better. It's like saying the guy from The Happiness Advantage (sorry I'm too lazy to look up his name) is biased about being happy. Like yeah, yeah he is. That's the point of his book is to try to convince to be happy, not to give you all the pros and cons about being happy and being sad. Or something, I haven't actually read that book but I'm pretty sure that's what he talks about. And like, if that doesn't convince you, then like, the book is called Mindset not Mindsets.

Ten thousand Hours of Dedication

The book I chose for Book Club was Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. I enjoyed reading the book because it talked about being successful and what makes people successful. In chapter two he begins talking about how to become an expert in everything and anything. To reach this level, one must spend up to ten thousand hours studying and practicing their special skill. I think it is absolutely crazy that someone would have to spend that much time on just to be successful however, it shows dedication. Gladwell says, "Achievement is talent plus preparation." I couldn't agree with this statement any more. I believe that you should put forth all your effort in something you love therefore, your time and dedication will pay off in the future. For example, I have been performing ever since the third grade and never have given up because I know that I would like to continue performing in the future. Eventually, my hard work, ten thousand hours, and dedication will pay off. Focus on the things that interest you and challenge you for the better.