Of the two readings that you were assigned for homework, what resonated with you? In other words, what did you take away from the readings and why? What part of the reading did you feel? Your response should be 4-5 sentences long.
28 thoughts on “Blog Post #3: What Resonated with You? (Again)”
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The words that resonated with me are from caught between two worlds. where the writer said stated that “being Chinese American means being stuck between two worlds.” it just got me thinking about my own life spending half my life in Bangladesh and rest in the states which world would I belong to. as we move forward this will try to bother us but we have to make a choice to either be stuck in the middle or get the best of both worlds depending on how you think, you can take the path best works for you.
Johir, I like how you framed this idea of either feeling stuck in the middle or being able to absorb the best of both worlds as a choice. A lot of the way we feel about our position in the world is based on our perspective. It’s up to us to alter our perspective so to frame out situation in a positive light.
Of the two assigned readings, the reading that stood out to me the most is “Suffer Less: On Writing as a Process.” The first reading talks about the problem, procrastination. Students tend to procrastinate for various reasons. Reasons for procrastination include “beliefs, habits, effects, and strategies.” This reading resonates with me because I tend to procrastinate quite frequently due to anxiety. When I receive an assignment, I get anxious and worry that I won’t do the task well enough. I always overestimate the difficulty of various tasks due to my lack of confidence.
This was a very candid and honest response, Sandi. It seems that you suffer a bit from perfectionism. Instead of pontificating about how you shouldn’t strive to be perfect, I will just say that, thus far, you have shared very interesting and insightful things with the class. I say this in efforts to help boost your confidence, because you seem to me to have the ability to think deeply and to create excellent work.
From the reading, “Suffer Less: On Writing as Process”, it resonated with me that procrastination is the reason for people to being lazy or they aren’t very good at managing their time and work. “Regardless of which possible, non-magical factors explain your anecdotal success with last-minute work, that success has an expiration date.” Last-minute work doesn’t always give you a good grade, more research and more efforts were required afterward. From the reading “Caught Between Two Worlds” My Journey Towards Self-Acceptance”, I resonated that it is important to accept our self being different with your surrounding, it is how your identities was formed.
Janie, I would like to take the point that you made about last-minute work not always giving you a good grade one step further…Most of the time last-minute work will get you a bad grade. Most teachers can see when work is rushed and, therefore, not very well thought out.
From the reading, “Suffer Less: On Writing as Process”, it resonated with me that Anxiety.For various reasons, students tend to be anxious because many students think about many things, how to make themselves live a good life, and then how to improve academically. This causes a lot of students to be too anxious and become unwilling to do things when doing things, and then there will be many wrong things when you have no thoughts to do things. If there is a mistake, he will be more anxious because he will remember what he did wrong, and he will always blame himself for doing the wrong thing.
Guidian, from what I can gather from your post, you seemed to have stated that anxiety can cause students to become reluctant to complete assignments. This, in turn, leads to students not submitting suitable work. If this is what you were trying to say above, I agree. If we can just get to work and bypass the anxiety, we tend to produce better work. Usually, getting past the anxiety and getting to work on something earlier rather than later, also gives us more time to revise our work before submitting it.
The part of ”Suffer Less: On writing as Process” resonates with me. ”The inability to work without adrenaline is a serious liability” in this reading document mentions that relying on pressure to give you success is not a lasting way. It is correct that the right amount of pressure can push people and make them work hard. But it is not real, it may be caused by luck for a while. Giving pressure is a short way to make yourself successful. Relying on the special pressure which is caused by last-minute work to get success is not the best way. What can really help you succeed is studying step by step and working hard with effort.
Bing Lin, I like that you highlighted this point that it isn’t sustainable to rely on adrenaline or putting pressure on ourselves to do complete our work. I like how you summed up your post, as well; working in a step-by-step or methodical way is usually a more stress-free way to approach our work.
From the first reading, “Suffer Less: On Writing Proces”, I resonated that procrastination is the issue that most people are facing, especially with the students. When we procrastinate, we tend to give ourselves a variety of reasons to procrastinate. This is not only will become a bad habit, but also will be more struggling with the anxiety. The second reading, “Caught Between Two World”, resonated with me with the author was perplexed with her own identity of being a Chinese American. Since I was born in Burma but spend most of my childhood in Taiwan, it sometimes makes me wonder where do I actually be part of.
May, I think a lot of bicultural people on this planet struggle with the idea of where they fit in. The people who seem to have made the most peace with being bicultural tend to try to take the “best of both worlds” from the two cultures to which they belong. In other words, instead of feeling trapped between two cultures, they tend to feel connected to both cultures and able to take the good things from both cultures and include those things in their life.
In the article, “Suffer less: On Writing as Process,” I feel connected to the part where experts claimed that the 2 main reason one procrastinate is due to anxiety and aversion. I see myself having symptoms of anxiety such as overestimating the workload, and feeling overwhelmed when facing the assignments. I get easily distracted by my surroundings and electronics, which is also a main cause of procrastination. A suggestion given in the text that can help students like me with procrastination is the read over the assignment first as soon as possible, break it down, and focus on the content of the assignment. When you have an idea of what you should write for the paper in mind, it would be much easier to start the assignment compared to starting out without any knowledge.
Kelly, I very much like this point that you made about “overestimating the workload.” I have never seen/heard a student put it that way, but this is often what we do. We overestimate what we need to do and get anxious about it instead of just getting started with it.
The reading ”Suffer Less: On writing as Process” resonates with me in many parts. ”The inability to work without adrenaline is a serious liability”. This quote illustrates that it is a problem to work if the work isn’t enough interesting. This resonates with me a lot because I barely work on something unless it interests me or I feel the need for it in the future. I am trying to improve this situation by reading something every day that doesn’t relate to me. It doesn’t help me love the topic but it makes me go through the uncomfortable situation, which I will get a habit into.
Talha, it is great that you are in touch with what interests you and what doesn’t. My suggestion would be to put more effort into the things that interest you, and to try to keep an open mind when approaching the assignments that don’t interest you. You might find something interesting about them as you engage with them, or you might just realize that the type of work that you had to do for that assignment just isn’t for you. We are always learning both what we like and don’t like to do.
From the first page of the article “Suffer less: on writing as progress,” the word motivational poster, I liked it because it’s true it does tell us about the hard work and achievements but does not tell us how to manage the time, energy, or completing obligations. I agreed with the sentences because it does tell us about the work and dreams but never tells the struggle behind it.
Om, I found this post a bit difficult to follow, so it is hard to comment on it.
As I was reading the reading “Suffer Less”, I felt connected with what the author has said. I personally had deal problems such as procrastination. But my reasons are some what similar and different. The main reason I can not break down an assignment in couple days is because I have other assignments to complete. And for whatever reason, they usually either have the same due dates or two-three days apart. Which it makes it harder to break down all the assignments then follow all along. So my simply solution is to finish one assignment then move on with the next one based on their due dates. Also the fact that sometime you just want to take a break.
In the second reading, I can totally feel the way the author felt. And this is actually something I wrote for the narrative literacy. I do not want to share too much about it, but stay tuned.
Pin Yuan, you are one of the first students that I have ever had to bring up this idea that assignments can be difficult to break down because you have other assignments due and, therefore, have less time and headspace to break each assignment down into parts. I appreciate your making this point. I still think it is possible to break assignments down into smaller parts, but, again, I do understand where you are coming from.
Through the readings of Kate Eickmeyer, what I was able to find that resonated the most to me speaking of procrastination explains, (Page 22) “Both of these scenarios add up to quagmires of anxiety and aversion so dense that you don’t want to think about the paper at all, which just results in more avoidance. The trap lies in directing your consciousness towards all these feelings instead of the task itself.” In the efforts of trying to complete an assignment, there are many obstacles that can differ for many but commonly appear through similar emotions. To improve on this, there are different approaches with one in breaking it down to parts that are more possible to complete and have one’s focus remain there. What continues to support this is in a similar situation that involves the assignment to achieving self-acceptance, Lucia Ku explains of her journey of how she drifts between two worlds. Being unable to set two feet in one or in the other, her approach to uptake it as a whole led her to fall in aversion and dumbfounded to fail despite her great efforts. As a result from her experience in high school, she would ponder more of self-identity and how it applies to her but only this time, she broke down her process in smaller parts explaining, (Page 92) “I discovered that being Asian-American meant being stuck between two different worlds: the Western/ American world that I grew up in and the Asian world I culturally identified with. Neither one of these two worlds claimed the entirety of me, and yet without either one of them, my identity would be incomplete.” This part of the reading is what I was able to feel most towards as this journey of hers can be taken as an example for many and the process to improve from procrastination.
Thank you for your very extensive response, Daniel! I am glad that you brought up this point about learning how to direct your energy into the task itself, and not letting that energy get used up by anxiety. For many people, it takes time to really get in the habit of directing one’s energy to the task at hand and not letting emotion or anxiety get the best of you. When possible, take small steps and do what is in your power to apply yourself to the task at hand instead of worrying about the task at hand.
After reading “Suffer Less: On writing as Progress,” I felt connected to a few things in the article. First, I use to do most of my work last minute because I was too lazy, but this would give me pressure, and too much pressure is not good. So I break down the assignment into parts to help me better understand and work out little by little. Second, you have to manage your time and think about how much time you need for the assignments because if you get a plan in your mind would make things easier. Third, you write down anything that comes to your mind when you have no idea what to write for the assignment, don’t just sit there waiting. The most important skill in the article I think is time management.
Thank you for sharing, Lei. Pressure can be good, but I think that the trick is learning how to get things done without the force of pressure. We want to try to become a bit more systematic in our approach and not just allow ourselves to be driven by the adrenaline that often comes with pressure. Thank you for sharing your three-step approach. I fully support it!
In the reading “Suffer less: On writing as progress, “I think the point where the author tells”if you struggle with time and paper management or you tend to procrastinate, those habits don’t make you a bad person. But they may cause you a great deal of suffering, and you can suffer less”.I agree with the point because sometimes laziness and being distracted from the work make the thing worse and we don’t get a chance to write the paper, this causes pressure and ends up doing last-minute work which is not good and doesn’t able to review it because we don’t get enough time. I think doing work on time is a good thing rather than being lazy and not doing work.
Thank you for resubmitting a response, Om. This one is much clearer. I agree that avoiding the work makes the weight of the assignment seem greater. The sooner we get to work, the less energy we waste worrying about things!
As I was reading “Suffer Less” I thought about the reasons why I would procrastinate. I agree, some of the reasons being anxiety and aversion. When I have many assignments due on similar days I would finish the ones that are due earlier. After finishing the assignments that are due early, when I come to the rest of the work I would be a little confused on what exactly the assignment was asking. Half of the time if I didn’t like or I’m confused about the assignments I would do the easier assignments then come back to not waste time.
Yu Yun, I think you approach of completing the “easier” assignments first is a good one. Hopefully, that clears some headspace for you to take on the more complicated/difficult assignments.