Mission: Possible

   As Carol Dweck mentions in “The Power of Believing That You Can Improve", it's important to have a "growth" mindset instead of a "fixed" mindset. People with "growth" mindsets realize that intelligence is something that can be improved by challenging the brain, where as those with "fixed" mindsets believe intelligence is innate and that one is born with a fixed level of intelligence. This is important to keep in mind when setting performance goals in college. Like Carol Dweck, I believe it's more important to focus on challenging oneself and actually learning, rather than just focusing on getting A's. This is why my goal moving forward is to learn and retain as much information as possible, information that I will be able to apply and that will propel me towards success in the future, both in school and my career of choice.

No Effort Required

 

    Though most parents think that the best parenting is achieved by constantly praising their children for being smart, studies have proven that is not always the case. When you tell a child that they’re smart, it often promotes complacency, especially at school. This is because kids who are told that they’re smart, are put in a mindset that they don’t need to put effort into anything in order to succeed. This complacency also affects these kids in school when they’re presented with anything that challenges their intelligence. When facing adversity in school, it’s been seen that students who are constantly praised for being smart, will give up a lot quicker than those praised for their hard work and determination. The complete opposite behavior is seen in children who are instead told that they’re hard workers. This type of praise seems to motivate these kids to put maximum effort into everything they do. The same happens when children are taught that intelligence is not innate but rather something that can be improved by challenging the brain. It’s important to note that in both cases, the behavior of students tends to continue all the way to college. Students who were praised for their “smarts” growing up, typically cheat on schoolwork and tests more often because they’ve always tried to maintain their image as a “smart student”, and so are not used to coping with failure. As Po Bronson says in the video The Myth of Praise, parents want to be an angel on their child’s shoulder, riding along with them to give them confidence. This is fine, but parents need to realize that the praise they give their child should be specific and helpful for their development, not something insincere and vague that gets thrown out constantly like “You’re so smart”, which ultimately can be detrimental to their precious child’s success.

Connecting The Globe

       In current society, across most cultures, social media is an extremely important tool for citizens to have. We may not immediately realize this because when most of us think about the term “social media”, we think about the meaningless posts about cats and what someone ate today on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. While this is a part of social media, the important thing is that it unites large groups of people and allows them all to communicate with each other. This can be vital in natural disaster situations like the earthquake in China in 2008 as Clay Shirky mentions in “How Social Media can Make History". Thanks to Twitter, citizens were able to report the events that were occurring in real time and so the world was able to respond much quicker than if Twitter didn’t exist. It also helped that the citizens affected were able to tell their first person accounts rather than having biased news reporting the situation, something that happens quite often in countries where government tries to control the media. While some aspects of social media are definitely pointless, if used correctly it is very powerful and will continue to help society evolve and hopefully stop oppressive governments from trying to censor its citizens. Because of this, I believe Social Media is a platform of communication we must all have. Without it, we can potentially end up like China or even worse, maybe even North Korea...no thanks.

 

I am an INTJ

After completing the Keirsey Temperament Test, I’ve discovered I am an “INTJ”. The letters, which represent traits of my personality type, stand for Introverted, iNtuitive, Thinking, and Judging. Here is a short video which helps better understand what an INTJ is. These traits affect my writing in many ways, both positively and negatively. As an introvert, most of the writing I do is done in my head, by myself. Also, I rarely seek out help from others. Being an introvert has worked out fine for me and my writing since I have a pretty good inner dialogue, which (once I actually get started writing) helps me write without much planning and/or effort. Writing with intuition, is something I do to a certain extent. For the most part I write my first drafts pretty plainly and sometimes they can pretty incoherent to everyone except myself. This is where my inner dialogue comes into play; I can view what I’ve written down and expand on thoughts or ideas since I know what exactly it is that I meant, even when no one else does. At the same time, I do like to write with factual information and examples, rather than just what I intuitively think. The thinking trait is very apparent in this aspect. I like my papers to be clear, organized, and straight to the point, which can make some of my writing a bit dull. In the future I may try to combat this by inserting more details and examples with a personal touch in my papers. The judging trait means that my life and desired outcomes are organized by myself, and so I usually stick to my own plan, rather than take advice from others. This can be detrimental to my writing if I let it be. If I don’t apply writing tools and techniques that I learn in class, it’s likely that my level of writing won’t advance. The description for the “INTJ” personality type seems to be a spot-on description of myself. There are definitely some traits that can possibly hold me back in my writing, but I’m certain that I can adapt and overcome any obstacles that may present themselves.

Just go to Starbucks

    Sometimes, our reliance on convenience has very negative effects. A perfect example of this is the Keurig K-Cup, as made evident in "A Brewing Problem". K-Cups are single-use containers which are used to make coffee with Keurig coffee brewers. They make about a cup of coffee per container. Keurig Green Mountain sold 9 billion K-Cups last year, enough that if placed end-to-end, would circle the globe 10.5 times. This is great for Keurig Green Mountain, but not whatsoever for the environment. This is because K-Cups are not recyclable or biodegradable. This means they will sit buried in a landfill forever. When this news originally broke to the public, it caused lots of outrage. The people at Egg Studios, a production company, were some of the people who were angry. They created and posted to YouTube, a video titled "Kill the K-Cup" The video currently has over 743,000 views on YouTube, and its’ message continues to trend on several social media outlets. Since the video went viral, hinting that many others view the K-Cup as a serious problem, Keurig Green Mountain has been forced to respond. They’ve recently unveiled plans to make K-Cups fully recyclable, but not until 2020. This means that if they continue to sell 9 billion K-Cups annually starting this year, they’ll produce 45 billion more non-recyclable pods, enough pods to circle the globe 52.5 times. The fact that it may take 5 more years for the current situation to be resolved is a bit insulting. This is because some of the competitor’s cups are already nearly completely biodegradable, recyclable, and/or reusable. Hopefully Keurig Green Mountain gets it figured out soon. They’ve already left a negative impact on the globe, and we can’t afford to let them continue doing so.

#KilltheKCup

 

You Need to Have Grit to Get That Bowl of Grits (getting that bowl of grits is a metaphor for becoming successful btw ok cool)

    Grit is an important trait to have if you want to be successful. If graduating college, being successful in your career, even becoming good at a sport or activity you enjoy is something you wish to accomplish, the grittier you are, the more likely you are to achieve your goal. As Angela Lee Duckworth states in The Key to Success? Grit –“Grit is passion and perseverance for very long term goals”. Whether you know it or not, mostly everyone currently attending college, including yourself, has some grit. Remember, you had to endure 12 extremely tedious years of schooling prior to getting here. If that’s not gritty perseverance, I don’t know what is. However, if for some reason you’re struggling to find grit within yourself, hope is not lost. Watching this video I’m sure will very quickly motivate you to become more tenacious, fearless, and assertive than a rabid honey badger.