At the beginning of the semester we were required to complete a wellness self assessment and based on the results develop two goals to improve our health over the semester. My two goals were that I need to work on my nutrition and exercise portion of my life and that I need to make my own environment at school a healthy and positive one. These goals were important to me because I wanted to be healthy, which would make my own body not only look better, but feel better; I could also feel better mentally and that would help myself with school and studying. I define my environment as both my classroom and my home; I needed both to be positive. Creating a positive environment helps with my anxiety and my stress level. I was almost entirely successful in meeting these goals. My wellness goal I met and am continuing to keep up. My environment goal I met halfway, there was a good change and an inconvenient change.
What helped me meet these goals was to honestly push myself and have a change of heart and attitude. I had goals in my mind so it gave me a drive to reassess what I was doing in my own life and how I could change. I started to eat better, but also with balance. I didn’t completely cut myslf off from every bad thing, I kept my oreos around to keep my sanity and my chocolate/sugar craving. I went to the grocery store knowing what I was going to buy before hand, which included more vegetables and yogurt and no snacks. My roommate and I kept each other accountable for what we ate and working out. With more positive energy around me, I found when I became frustrated, I could simply withdraw from the person or situation. I have also improved and gotten better with speaking my mind and having open communication and not bottling up situations within myself. This came into play in meeting my goal half way as I had some roommate problems that caused my living environment to be tense. Before this semester I probably would have never spoken about the situation, but this time around I tried my best to confront it in a mature manner.
The barriers to meeting my goals were school. I am up at 6 am sometimes 4:45 and don’t get home until 5 pm, not including homework and going to bed at a reasonable hour. It was hard to not binge eat when I was stressed or just trying to stay awake. With long school hours or having a lot of assignments that needed to be completed, I would be tired most days and not want to go workout, I just wanted to stay home in my sweatpants and relax for a little. I am also a very tired person in general so I struggle to stay awake during the day, even when I get the right amount of sleep.
According to Prochaska’s Transtheoretical Model my readiness to change was at the preparation (determination) stage which is described by Martin (2009) as, people in this stage may be experimenting with small changes in their behavior. They have probably resolved to make a serious attempt at real change within the near future. These people will likely respond well to structured programs that can help get them to the next level. At the end of summer and starting school, I knew I wanted to change aspects of my life, to make myself healthier. It all started with small steps, whether it was to not snack on foods and to listen to music when I was stressed. That readiness has changed over the semester by currently being at the action stage. Martin (2009) says this stage is when people are engaged in a new, healthy behavior. This is a difficult time due to temptation and the chances of reverting to old behaviors since it hasn’t been all that long. They are open to receiving help to prevent relapse and to further build their confidence that they can succeed. It has not been six months like the model suggests, but over the past three months I have changed my behavior and daily doings. On top of changing, I want to continue this change. I want to grow into this next phase of life and grow in the right aspects and to figure that out it takes small changes.
The changes necessary for me to be able to keep meeting my goals is to figure out a gym schedule so I can go at specific times on certain days to start working out more effectively. I still need to strive to make healthier food options everyday and when I choose to snack to not eat a bulk of it in a short amount of time, especially if it is not a healthier option. I will also keep up by training for my first tough mudder 5K race, I have my best friend joining me so we can hold each other accountable for working out and eating right. I am also super motivated because this semester I have lost weight and I am feeling better mentally and physically and I want to keep going. Further, I will continue to find different ways to clear my head and get away from chaos and stress by having a nightly routine or putting aside a special day of the week where I can do anything I want that is for me. I will choose what I do depending on my mood for that week, it could be hanging out by myself, hanging out with friends, painting, watching a movie, a self care night, anything that isn’t related to what is making me stressed that week.
Mural in Boston Children’s Hospital by artists Caleb Neelon and Souther Salazar
I struggled to find the exact picture I needed for this post, but I searched and searched, but it only can be in my memory, for now. Instead I found a piece of art with the same idea. It is bright and busy; it has a lot going on with a lot of different images to look at. This reminds me of Nursing because it goes back to my roots of what sparked my heart to pursue Nursing. When I was younger I was in and out of the hospital for a vein disorder that I have in my left leg. My nurses who cared for me at Boston Children’s Hospital are who inspired me to pursue this career. While I was there and had down time, my favorite thing to do was look at all the artwork in the hallways. This one particular wall, right off the elevator had this piece of artwork that was 3D and textured, it was similar to a word search/scavenger hunt, but with pictures and physical objects! I sat in front of this piece of art until I was called by my mom or my doctor. Artwork in the hallways of hospitals is a beautiful distraction and a calming mechanism.
Throughout the course in ENG 110 J, we have gone through revision strategies during the semester. My favorite active reading strategy is marking up the text with underlining and margin notes. With adding notes on the side, it makes it easier for me to remember my thoughts and for when I go back to the text, I won’t have to re-read a bunch of text, but mainly focus on the parts that stuck out to me and the pieces I thought were important. My favorite brainstorming strategies are writing down what comes to mind after reading all the material I am supposed to so I can start the process of setting up an outline. Again, this step helps me with getting out all my first reactions and thoughts. My favorite drafting strategy is to actually make an outline (with the help of looking back at my material and everything I marked up and quotes I highlighted or underlined. My favorite revision strategy is to get peer edits, my professor to look at my work, reading my own work outloud, and to keep looking back at my thesis to refer to that. With so many edits coming through, I usually have different color pens for each person, just because it makes it easier in my brain. Especially, so I can tell my edits and how they flow or may be different from who edits my paper. My favorite polishing strategy is take a fresh final copy of my paper that holds no edits or markings on it. With this, I will again read my work outloud and add or mark up any small edits here and there that it may need with a highlighter or pen. I have definitely found these strategies to help me outside of this course, as I can also apply it to other classes I am enrolled in. It helps me to read my work and interpret it as I am supposed to.
I always really enjoy peer review as it always helps me out tremendously and it’s always good to get others opinions on my work. My strategy to achieve my plan is to read and hear my peers edits on my paper and correct the ones they stated and then reread my essay myself and make my own corrections and add more of my own thoughts. This is how I will help myself achieve my goal. My goal for this paper is to get the real meaning of beauty across, from my own opinion. Of course, some might not agree, but that’s the beauty of it. My biggest challenge for my paper is talking about my own personal experience. I sometimes forget to add these and it is hard for me to add them in the right places. I realize it’s a great aspect to have in an essay as it makes reading more personal and connections can be made with the reader (hopefully). Another struggle I seem to have is always relating everything back to my thesis. For this paper, I am going to have to constantly go back and reread every paragraph one by one and look at my thesis to make sure it makes sense. If a challenge comes up that proves too difficult for me to solve on my own, resources that I plan to use are my peers that I live with. I will also look in my They Say/I say book. If I am still struggling I know I have the Student Academic Success Center and my professor to go to.
In my essays the forms of communication that I plan on using are: linguistic, visual, audio and spatial. With these different forms I will be able to show different forms of art as I am writing to prove my claims that I am stating. I plan on using forms of art that I personally find beautiful, even though it may differ from others opinions. But, that’s a good thing! In Armstrongs essay he explains that everyone experiences and see beauty different from one another and that’s what connects us. And that alone is a beautiful concept. In comparison to my own views on beauty, I also want to talk and show what society views as beautiful, as again, in Armstrongs essay he talks about society and how society as a whole strays away from the concept of beauty. I will also most likely use Owl Purdue to help with my citations.
Outline:
- Make my intro and touch base slightly on everything that I will talk about (ex: Armstrong’s essay, the video shown in class, my view, and classmates view)
- Going to mention Stephen and Aaron’s project: It talks about father and son and the bond they have and how the father gets to watch his son grow up and go through life (meaningful and parents and most fathers can relate, it can also touch base with young adults as they can hope for the future; watching the video plus hearing the song has a special aspect that makes it beautiful); with my side, I could also insert a song that had a multimodal meaning for me called Tequila by Dan and Shay
- I want to show a picture or maybe a couple of my own that I took while I was on a mission trip in Haiti and talk about what I get from the picture and my own experience and why I took it. I could also show a scenery picture of the beach and how looking or being at the beach is a beautiful sight, but how it’s also a calming place for myself to go as its beauty relaxes my mind from all the stress I may be having at the time
- Armstrong: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” “To regard beauty as a luxury adornment or a social signifier was to miss the true potential of the experience,” ““When we find something beautiful, we are called towards a vision of harmonious perfection. This is not only a quality in the object, but a longing in ourselves” … I will you these quotes to back up my own opinions and also explain Armstrong
- The video: “Prettiness matters as it is an emblem of hope which is an achievement, it is hope preserved in a bottle for when we need it”
Conclude with restating everything I wrote so the reader can remember the argument and point of my essay
Exploring Armstrong’s statement, “To regard beauty as a luxury adornment or a social signifier was to miss the true potential of the experience,” means that if one were to focus on their social status and the possession of objects, they are missing the whole point of beauty. He explains that beauty is to, “…elevate the soul,” (5) as it reaches to create peace between people. Schiller goes into context when he talks about the two drives of a human’s mind for gratification. The first is, the ‘sense’ drive which, “…lives in the moment and seeks immediate gratification. It craves contact and possession,” (2) where the second drives focuses on ‘form’ and is, “…the inner demand for coherence over time, for abstract understanding and rational order” (2). As this drive is mainly based around leaving one’s own experiences to discover universal ones. Schiller wants to get across that human nature has two senses of longing, which in turn both balance each other out to flow in “harmony.” If one drive is too dominant, then we would become dry and callous.
I view beauty as something that is felt organically inside you in a particular moment. I also think beauty is something that can bring joy or happiness to your life. It can also be the feeling when your heart gets all soft or even if you feel some sort on contentment, safeness, or even calmness to something. I think society sees beauty as basing their views off of other people. I feel like society views beauty as in strictly body types or perfect relationships. A quote that stuck out to me in Armstrong’s essay about beauty was, “When we find something beautiful, we are called towards a vision of harmonious perfection. This is not only a quality in the object, but a longing in ourselves” (3). This quote stands out simply because beauty reaches the soul of everyone in their own special way. And that is something that I didn’t quite realize until I read this. Beauty is felt with the heart. Everyone experiences beauty, which connects us. Yet, everyone finds beauty in their own way and it speaks to everyone different and that in itself makes life beautiful.
A presentation that I really enjoyed was that of Stephen and Aaron. They based their presentation off a country song called “Boy” by Lee Brice. This song holds deep meaning between a father and a son and how the father gets to watch his son grow up and experience life in different ways. They chose to use a song to express a form or art because music holds deeper meaning and can actually tell a story, like this song. Before these two presented this song to the class, I had actually known it, as I was sitting back in my seat mouthing the words. Yet, it did open me up to a new perspective in a way once they talked about their interview with Matt Thomas. And how Matt talked about, “his son doesn’t know what life is going to bring him and he wants him to be prepared, It makes me look forward to having a family and having that special bond with my son or sons, It’s a song that makes me think about how I was raised and what I may not know I’ll encounter in life, but also that I need to be very conscientious of my future children.” As for me since a young age, all I’ve ever wanted to be a mom and still can’t and this interview to me was super sweet and kind of hits a good spot in my heart. Especially, in a weird way I have always wondered if guys ever thought of kids (obviously not as much as us girls, but just slightly). My peer’s primary mode of communication was through an essay and also playing the song aloud. This helped with their overall effectiveness because it made it more personal, especially since they chose a song that hits all the feels and makes you think.
With doing this exercise, I did four different kinds of highlighting. The pink color is for when I was talking about my own opinion (“I believe” and “I agree”), the yellow is when it transitioned into Ma or Lehrer talking about their beliefs (“he claims, he believes, he goes on, he just”), the green is sentence transitions, and the blue was for words or little phrases that I repeated.
As I was highlighting, I realized that I repeated myself quite a bit and for the most part, my transitions were bad and not as strong as they should be. Going further, I know to change them and highlighting definitely helped me to see this. I think I will keep the “bad” transitions as transitions, but change them to a different word or phrase. I feel like my transitions were to simple and I can definitely see where I could add more and make them stronger in general. For me, I feel like I used the words “art” and “science” more than other devices.
Jonah Lehrer’s main argument in his article, “The Future of Science…Is Art,” is science needs art, they need to coexist together because they complete each other. The article talks about modern science when it says, “modern science has made little progress toward any unified understanding of everything….It’s not that we don’t have all the answer. It’s that we don’t even know the question” (2). Science needs the arts and an artists needs to be intertwined with the experimental process. A bridge needs to be built between the sciences and the arts, “By heeding the wisdom of the arts, science can gain the kinds of new insights and perspectives that are the seeds of scientific process” (2). In order for our brains to dig deeper and widen our perception then we need an artistic imagination. Art will one day be a crucial source of scientific ideas (5). The research of science is a hard and long process, but, “we need to draw from both science and art, so that each completes the other” (6).
Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle: it is impossible to measure two properties of a quantum object, such as its position and momentum (or energy and time), simultaneously with infinite precision (Google)
“The bridging principle”: the neural even that would explain how the activity of our brain cells create the subjective experience of consciousness and making connections between two, yet separate things
Reductionism: the practice of analyzing and describing a complex phenomenon in terms of phenomena that are held to represent a simpler or more fundamental level, especially when this is said to provide a sufficient explanation (Google)
Synapse: a junction between two nerve cells, consisting of a minute gap across which impulses pass by diffusion of a neurotransmitter (Google)
Epiphenomenon: a secondary effect or byproduct that arises from but does not causally influence a process, in particular (Google)
Holistic perspective: means that we are interested in engaging and developing the whole person. You can think of this as different levels, physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. It’s the concept that the human being is multi-dimensional. We have conscious and unconscious aspects, rational and irrational aspects (Google)
Metaphor: a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable (Google)
Other words that I had to look up for myself:
Trajectory: the path followed by a projectile flying or an object moving under the action of given forces (Google)
Quantum: a discrete quantity of energy proportional in magnitude to the frequency of the radiation it represents (Google)
Enigma: a person or thing that is mysterious, puzzling, or difficult to understand (Google)
Callous: showing or having an insensitive and cruel disregard for others (Google)
Paradigm: a typical example or pattern of something; a model (Google)
Ephemeral: lasting for a very short time (Google)
One artist I chose is Virginia Woolf. Her role in this essay is how she focuses on writing about, “life as it’s lived” (2). She wants to focus on moments of the ordinary mind on any regular day. She has been studying for years and it has been said that her novels feel true because they tell a part of reality that explains itself. Woolf describes the mind from the inside and uses consciousness as a guide.
One scientist I chose is David Chalmers who is a philosopher and scientist. He specializes in the mind and language. His role in this essay is by talking about consciousness and having the view that we will, “require a new scientific approach, one that is able to incorporate the wisdom of the arts” (4). He believes that there is more than just our brain to explain our consciousness. He explores the reasoning behind our consciousness as humans and why we have one.
