FRO13 LC15

Credit goes to Spongbob Squarepants- http://mashable.com/2013/09/12/freshman-college/

The biggest thing besides the extra responsibility and independence that I gained when I started going to college, is me getting bigger and my wallet getting smaller. From glazed donuts, to Moe’s, to Gremaldi’s, Starbucks…. (this list can go on and on), freshmen 15 is an understatement! But aside the fight to resist food, transitioning to Baruch was not as hard as it first seemed to be. Yes getting adjusted to certain professor’s work guidlines and writing papers late into the night made me feel as if I’m a zombie the next day, but this is all apart of the college experience. Over the 3 months, I learned how to operate on barely any sleep, leadership, the need to write drafts, leadership, how to respond correctly in emails, leadership, the need to plan ahead and be prepared and lastly leadership. The fact that the college is in the city is definitely a big plus and only encourages me to say that I made the right decision in choosing to come to Baruch. I am though grateful for the fact that I’m in the dean honors program not just for the fact that I have free tuition but that we have early registration. Now I just watch as my friends who are regular freshmen panic at registering for classes as the times are outrages and the classes they want are already filled. Overall, I am satisfied with Baruch and can’t wait to see where this college will lead me too, but first I have to deal with the food inflow.

The one thing that was brought to my attention – mediation.

I was always aware of it and quite frankly even thought of doing before this workshop. I understand the importance of taking time to unwind after a long day of class, work on the side, and long distance relationship problems.

But at this point, i don’t consciously do it anymore. Why? Because i have no idea. Maybe it’s the fact that i’m always crowded with so much on my mind that i don’t even think to do it. Maybe it’s a vicious cycle.

So much things to do in a designated time, i just dont know what to do. i forget to eat lunch or dinner many times after getting home late from the lib.

Maybe I need to meditate.

I was not fully convinced of the benefits of mindfulness after watching the documentary. The results seemed inconclusive and I think the director manipulated the data. The students were only part of the experiment for a brief period. AFter the experiment only a few of them still used the exercises. Also, the director did not do a thorough job of following up with the students. She only shared knowledge of a select few cases that turned out successfully.  It’s not accurate for her to make broad statements that meditating substantially improves school performance. Also, she only tested a limited group of people. The school in the documentary had a lot of troubled and low-performing youth. How can we expect the same results in a different type of school?

I personally believe that meditating and mindfulness have their benefits but this documentary did nothing to support those beliefs. During high school, my Medical Ethics class would have guided meditations for 40 minutes most Fridays. It’s a lot more challenging to stay awake and focused for an entire class period than five minutes. As the class progressed more and more people were able to stay with the teacher’s readings  and not fall asleep. I think this was a great exercise for self-control and focus.

The idea of meditating a few minutes every now and then wasn’t new to me.  My aunt is a devout Buddhist, and she makes sure to set aside time for meditation everyday.  She evens has a whole collection of tapes and CDs of chants and meditation “songs.”  Somehow, a good majority of my family has joined her over the years.  Now, often my dad would go to her and exchange tapes.  I used to find it all ridiculous but my mind has changed.  I try to meditate myself now to relieve stress, but it’s not easy.  Rather than emptying, my mind wanders off to useless thoughts.  It does help me de-stress, but I don’t think that what’s meditation really is.  Maybe the problem is that I haven’t really truly focused on meditating before.  However, “Changing Minds and Concord High” showed great results with meditation among the students, helping them cope with anger and stress.  I’ll definitely remember this when I’m going through stressul times myself.

The video that we saw for our enrichment workshop reminded me of the technique used throughout scouting when someone is being taught. The EDGE method, as it is referred to, stands for Explain, Demonstrate, Guide, Enable. In my three years as a National Youth Leadership Training Course Leader, I  have seen this technique work on literally hundreds of people between the ages of 13 and 20. Every single one of the course participants walks away at the end of the week (yes, it is a 1 week course) talking about how now they have more confidence, they know how to handle something, or they have a better handle on life, just to name a few. In addition, my staff and I have received multiple phone calls, emails, and letters from parents asking us what we did with their children because the responsible young adults we returned to them could not possibly be the people they dropped off. I see all of this and then I have to ask myself, “If a team of 8 teenagers can get a group of 50 of their peers excited and interested in a topic and successfully teach it in a week, then why do so many people go to school for 20 years and come out feeling like they learned nothing?” And then I see exactly what the problem is – no one teaches, they just speak. They Explain and Enable, they don’t Demonstrate or Guide. Classes are very often lectures followed by homework where not understanding the concept is met with a notice of incompetence instead of further education. In the few instances where students get a demonstration and are guided through the process, there is a remarkable increase both in test scores and student happiness. So I have one more question: why doesn’t anyone else do this?

Meditation is associated with sounds like “ommmm” and “ahhhhh” –basically sounds that are socially unacceptable unless you are sitting pretzel style with your hands on your knees and pretending to clear your mind. However, during my senior year of high school, a small old woman forced me to change my preconceived notion of meditation. Ms. Bierig, my now-retired medical ethics teacher, taught the class about visual imagery, which is a form of meditation. She made us meditate once every week for an entire class period. I may have fallen asleep during a few of these sessions, but my teacher’s goal was ultimately accomplished: we left the class more relaxed than we did when we walked in.

The enrichment documentary, The Changing Minds at Concord High, displayed a similar practice of asking students to meditate in the classroom. The students in the documentary only meditated for five minutes as opposed to the forty minutes my class practiced. I can’t honestly say the documentary inspired me in any sense. The testimonials appeared to be so contrived and formulaic that it lost its effect on me. While the documentary didn’t have much of an impact on me, it did remind me and inspire me to resume my meditation periods in high school.

After a long day of work and classes, I would just sit on my couch and wander off into a distant world with my mind unrestrained from the worries of my life. I guess I inadvertently discovered how to meditate. If this simple form of relaxation gave me such a good grip on reality and how to handle the pressures of everyday life, imagine what it could do for those who are constantly at unease with their minds. Before the enrichment workshop, I never knew how meditation could be so helpful to at risk teens. This workshop provided me with a new insight into mediation, and my former skepticism and ambivalent feelings towards this ideas were diminishing. This documentary should serve as a message to those who have trouble coping with the pressures of life, by informing them about how taking a few minutes of their lives to not think could have a significant positive impact on them.

Prior to attending the enrichment workshop and learning about meditation, I had already done some meditation on  my own.

While I was still in high school, I was constantly stressed by the amount of work I received from my teachers and bosses. Unable to contain the stress within myself, I would usually be moody and the veins on my forehead would bulge and twitch. In order to bring temporary relief, I would usually take the stress out on my friends and family. I knew that wasn’t the right thing to do and I felt guilty for doing so, but it was the only thing that seemed right to me at the time.

During eleventh grade, I discovered mediation as a new way of relieving my stress. I first came upon this method when my head was clouded by millions of thoughts that kept attacking one another and I read on an online article that mediation would help clear the mind. So, I went into my bedroom and blocked all light from entering and silenced every sound emitting devices. By doing so, my mind would not wander astray by sound or sight and it would be able to focus on my breathing and clearing of the mind.  After about twenty minutes, I would leave the room and return to my daily activities with a clear mind and in a happier mood.

There was one line that resonated with me from the documentary “Changing Minds at Concord High School.” It has nothing to do with meditation.

An adult was explaining the fight-or-flight response to the camera. She noted that the stress hormones indicative of this response were especially high among Concord High School students. The demeaning notion that the students in underperforming schools care too much for mundane things rather than for their academic performance and careers is false. The frequently high stress levels reflect traumatic experiences of many students, which isn’t too surprising considering the school’s largely low-income and minority student body (*in SY 2010-11, 57% of students were eligible for school lunch, 35% were black/African American, and 38% were Hispanic/Latino*).

Of course, it’s nothing new that poorer backgrounds tend to cause less academic success, but it’s nice that even the littlest (and probably unconventional) tactics are used to try to help at-risk students. Still, we know that meditation won’t bring the bacon home. How many times has it been said that it’s a vicious cycle of poverty wherein the poor do badly in school, grow up to be poor adults, and raise kids who will live as their parents lived? Economic mobility begins at the schools – if not earlier – so we should focus on expecting more from teachers, paying teachers higher salaries, and building more schools to lower class sizes. (Universal pre-K? Meh.)

*https://reportcards.nysed.gov/files/2010-11/AOR-2011-353100011470.pdf

Prior to the enrichment workshop, I was skeptical if meditation is actually useful. Sitting down, legs folded, in silence, humming was the only thing I thought of meditation. My perception of meditation completely changed as I watched the documentary of the students at Concord High School. Students with stressful lives taking a couple minutes out of their day to relieve stress was actually helpful for them. These students were really going through a rough time in their personal lives and in school. To see them over come it or progress was very insightful and inspiring. The director of the documentary did a good job conveying the message and it was loud and clear. Being that I’m a college student myself, with a huge workload is a lot of stress. Maybe I’ll start taking time out of my day to do some meditation as well.