ELP and my issue with classes

Classes in general irk something in me and they typically just dont sit right, i have never been 100 percent sure exactly what it was until ELP showed me something different. After ELP i have been able to compare and contrast my classes and see clearly what  bugs me about them: their improbability and general abstractness. In philosophy i learn things that i would only use on an ethics board, in math i learn how to do things i will rarely need to be able to do, english helps me right papers but aside from that it is just as bad. the point is that while all these classes are invaluable and teach me things that are crucial for my development and learning: they are rarely applicable.

Thats where ELP comes in, although we do little to no classwork and this is my only homework, i feel as though the learning done in ELP is harder to explain but infinitely easier to apply.

So what have i taken away?

Well, as far as skills and confidence goes, i have taken away a lot, i learned to put myself out there more, trust in my self, believe in others, and generally how to make connections with other people. In honesty, i have a slight bit of trouble listing what i learned from ELP because there was never a theorem or a vocab word, just examples and practice, the way learning should be done in my opinion.

So i learned a lot, it is incredibly hard to accurately articulate what it was but i can feel the change in my day to day life.

Where do i go from here is the next question.

Well, this final project is preparing me for a real world scenario better than anything i have ever done in any class before. I have spent and will continue to spend more time on this project than any other final, by a long shot, but this final will reward me infinitely more in terms of experience and know-how. I believe that the final project is invaluable to applying the learnings of the class and it a perfect stepping stone into the future of using your learning from ELP.

So basically, I had an awesome time and i enjoyed every bit of learning!

Go ELP!

Tuckman's Stages and Video Clips

Clip 1-

Coach Carter: In my opinion, this first clip was an example of norming, the third stage of leadership. this is shown by the team volunteering to do push-ups for one person. this shows their desire to work together as a team in harmony.

Clip 2-

Aladdin: this second clip shows the completion of aladdin's adjourning phase. in the beginning he had ideas and an agenda of his own but throughout the movie he changed from his selfish goals to his attempt and desire to free the genie.

Clip 3-

Remember the Titans: this third clip shows Tuckman's storming phase. the overall negative attitude of the group as a whole demonstrates the conflict inherent in the group. however, this conflict is quickly dealt with so it no longer inhibits the team from functioning as a cohesive group.

Clip 4-

Finding Nemo- this last clip demonstrates the performing stage of Tuckman's idea. all the other animals step up and volunteer to help Nemo's dad look for him, this represents a sacrifice of their substance for another's pursuit.

Clip 5-

John Tucker Must Die- This clip shows a group Forming, or coming together and as outlined in Tuckman's model of group development, although they have some individual issue that would normally put them at odds, they put their differences aside for a common goal. it is only at the end when this goal is nearly realized that they address their issues and the group dissolves.

Communication and Personality

The key to communicating with anyone is making them believe that they are important to you as an individual,  this is because once this has been established any inhibitions and reservations will be more easily done away with and the person you are communicating with will more easily open up to you. there are a couple of methods that make this simpler including:

Looking them in the eye -  This is kind of straight forward but people often forget it, no matter what you are doing, eye contact is incredibly important. it lets the person know that you are paying attention to them and you care about what they have to say, maintaining eye contact is paramount when communicating with someone.

Engaging them - engaging someone often goes hand in hand with maintaining eye contact but it can often goes above and beyond. engaging someone can mean guiding their pace when they are walking, prompting them about a situation, or just generally reacting to the state that they are in.

Asking Questions - this one may be a little controversial but i believe that one of the most important parts of being a good listener and communicator is being active, specifically asking questions. if you ask someone a question about what they are saying then it reinforces their belief that you care and are actively listening, not mentioning the added benefit in clarity that it gives to you.

Reacting - reacting often is parallel to asking question since asking questions is one of the easiest ways to react. some other ways are to outwardly display your reactions as facial expressions, and to generally allow the person to see your human reaction to their story.

Being open - this is key, in order to be on the receiving end of a good communication you must be open to being the good communicator, this often means being able to share personal and intimate details about yourself and your life with the person you are communicating with. even if you dont get the opportunity to share details, being prepared to do so creates a bond with the person you re interacting with.

These are my best tips at being a great communicator but they are by no means conclusive, these are just a few ways at bettering yourself in the important art of communication.

Love and Honesty

Love

http://thisibelieve.org/essay/31264/

this essay by tanuj Bansal is entitled love lives through them all, and he talks about how his love transcended cultural boundaries, values, and space. I picked this one because i believe i can align with it, in a way. I have been dating my girlfriend for close to three years now and that means that i have come to be pretty close with her family by this point. when we first started dating i didnt see eye to eye with her family on much of anything, in fact being alone in a room with them scared me straight. however, now i am comortable enough to go spend a week up in tahoe with them and go sailing or hunting or whatever they may feel like and i know that even though we dont always agree on everything, one thing we can conclude upon is our love for that one girl.

Honesty

Honesty, the word the scares us all. Ever since i have been small enough to know what lying was i have been somewhat of a compulsive liar. i lied about the time of day, what i was feeling, whether or no i had studied for a test, basically anything that i could lie about i did. now this story would be great of all this lying came back to bite me in the ass at some point and ever since then i had made a vow to never lie again but...it didn't . like most kids some lies came back to bite me but i never ever got in any serious or major trouble, mostly, my lies were all believed and i got away with them. there was one tool however, i started to see that people i lied to: my closest friends, my mother and father, teachers, general acquaintances, started to disbelieve everything i told them. it all came to a head when i had borrowed my teacher's pen in 5th grade and stowed it in my desk overnight for safekeeping since it appeared to be a very nice pen. the next morning, when the teacher arrived to find his pen missing he searched all the desks and upon finding it in mine filed for my suspension from school for stealing his pen. i pleaded with him and told him the truth but my reputation preceded me and my honesty...i was lucky enough to not be suspended but from that moment on i tried to tell the truth more. to this day i attempt to tell the truth, especially the hard truths because i feel as though those are the ones that need to be heard the most and i never want to have a reputation as a liar again.

Dilemmas

Cheating: The Universal Internal Struggle

What do i mean by universal? well, anyone who has ever taken a challenging class has struggled with the desire to cheat. Free answers, a way to check your work on test, an almost guaranteed higher score and when you boil it down...not many people get caught so it almost seems worth it.

The Setup:

Senior year of high school, my college apps have been submitted and i am trying desperately to raise my grades after three years of screwing around so that I can get enough money off to make it feasible to attend a four year, private college. At my high school you took six classes, period. you couldn't overload your schedule like at college because of how the timeslots worked. that wasn't acceptable to me so I found a way around it. Honors Chamber Choir met after school and still counted as an academic class, in other words, my seventh class to help me raise my grades. My goal was this, i had a 3.3 gpa and I wanted something well north of a 3.7 to smooth the college process so I was taking two honors classes, and AP class, and a seventh class while all the other seniors were taking their well deserved rest. after a little I figured out that some extra curriculars would help a lot as well so on top of playing Track and Field, being the VP of the Young republicans, a group leader for two retreat leading groups, participating in a third retreat organization, and a ton of other clubs i decided i would do the play because....why not? My average school day was about 11 hours (7-6) and i did my homework before school, during break, and during lunch. To put it simply I had overloaded myself a little too much.

The What?:

Anyone who has every done a play knows what hell comes with tech week. basically you run the play through from beginning to end again and again and again... etc until it is perfect. throw this into my already horrific schedule and you have me at school until 10:30 most nights, factor in the 30 minutes it takes me to drive home and now there is actually no time to do homework and this is a problem. I made the choice to take the AP physics test while I was in Honors Physics because...im not really sure but i did. taking the AP test makes you exempt from a final in AP physics but in Honors physics apparently ambition is met with punishment because i still had to take the final, just two weeks before final week so i had less time to study...fantastic. Come friday and I am handed the final placed in the lab by my self and told to come back when i was done. I could barely stay awake, i hadnt even cracked my book open, the play debuted that night, and i was all alone, it was all too easy to cheat. I could have easily taken out my phone and looked up every single answer without ever getting caught and aced the final.

The So What?:

So basically in my mind at this point here is what is going on, it is almost justified to cheat after the week that i have had, I have an A+ in physics so we all know I know the stuff i just didnt memorize it for the stupid test. however, if i fail the test it will tank my grade and could easily affect my college acceptance probabilities. No brainer, cheat...right? when you boil it down i guess it really comes to whether or not you think the rules should be bent for you in special circumstances.

The What? v2:

so rewind again and in in a stool in the physics lab, whether because i had a sudden moral flux or because i was too lazy to look up 50 questions on my phone i decide to fail the test and take what's coming. life lessons and all. needless to say it threw me off my game for a while especially when i got the final back and saw a 65% marked on it. that would easily bring my A+ down to a C... then my teacher calls me in after class to let me know that because i was taking the AP test my final didn't count for my grade, however she didnt tell me because she made it harder than the AP test so i could experience the struggle of not knowing the answers to questions, like the AP test. to top it all off, later that week 4 kids in my physics class got suspended for cheating with their phones because a kid who was a little infatuated with our teacher told on the kids to get on her good side. one of those 4 kids could have easily been me.

The Now What?:

What did i learn? well as if it weren't painfully obvious, even in dire situations that seem to have no good outcome, sticking to your morals is always worth it. had i gotten suspended i would not have been able to come to santa clara even if i had still been accepted. the next time i get in a situation like this i hope that i can remember what i learned last time and do the right thing.

P.S. - the play was hello, dolly! and it was fantastic.

Accessibility

That's what this video is all about: accessibility and its importance in our world. The video's actual title is "An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube" by Michael Wesch, an anthropologist presenting his video to the Library of Congress. his argument is simple, yet not simplistic, formal, yet not pedantic, and most of all accessible, yet not easy. His argument is that more of a statement that necessitates re-considering, an obvious truth that we are all oblivious to; the new era of technology has fundamentally changed our social lives along with every other aspect of our life. 

If you have an hour to kill ( I mean really kill, literally nothing else to do), I recommend watching the video and if you only have 5 minutes, I recommend the first 15 minutes. Wesch's argument is so persuasive because it used examples that we all know and can relate to, there are no abstract textbook examples, nothing from a generation prior. Our generation ( to be completely fair, it's pobably more gen x/y than us...) is the one responsible for the examples in his video; we all secretly sang and loved "numa numa" we all danced to Soulja Boy and embarrassed ourselves at dances with our feeble attempts at his Soulja Step, we all love watching Charlie bite his brother's finger. Our generation is the internet. We inherited it, we adopted it, we control it, we love it.

So what? why is this important? well without discussing the economic and political reasons...ok well maybe we can for a little... As discussed in the beginning of the video, the power of the internet is limitless, literally the one infinite power in the universe because it is the collective of humanity, all our failure, successes, aspirations, tribulations, and desires are documented, channeled through, and brought to fruition through the internet somehow or another. The internet has it's opponents running scared for good reason. The government has never stopped (and never succeeded) in their attempts to limit, control, and monitor the internet (despite the inherent contradiction in that), the record labels have been run out of their own game, TV providers are forced to sue their way back into the game, Movie producers are barely holding on. Why? because the collective of humanity demanded something and these respective businesses did not respond to we acted, we took it upon ourselves to get what we wanted and left them in the dust with the realization of their dependence. 

Ok, back to something relevant. The induction of the internet into modern society has done away with the theory of the six degrees of separation and replaced it with something closer to the degree of separation. now of course this is a slight exaggeration because not everyone is connected to the internet but the point still carries water. I can go online and watch the mass execution of miners in south africa and then five minutes later watch a lecture at MIT or Harvard about Socioeconomics, all for free. That's the kicker here, everything is free if you know where to look. some places are grey areas of the law, some are straight up black, even our university bans some, but they exist and people use them, by the millions, every day. 

Now if you own a record label, a producing agency, or are a copyright lawyer this causes you to lose sleep at night, but the rest of us can rest easy because this is just the prelude to something huge, monumental, literally as large as the world. With all this accessibility comes the advent of communication, collaboration, and advancement with people we never knew of, in way we never thought possible. An Engineer from China, a mining company from Africa, a manger from America, and a Billionaire from Saudi Arabia can work together on the latest high rise in Abu Dhabi with a free VoIP program such as Skype. And a 12 year old can use the same free program to video chat with his current love interest.

Finally, the last paragraph ( I swear) So how does this affect me? well, it should be obvious by now...but aside from lurking through the backstreets of the internet of my computer (whose parts i all ordered online by the way) I believe that this new era of accessibility should not be restricted to the internet, but rather extrapolated to every aspect of our lives. This new technology should be embraced and bolstered, not feared and controlled. Textbook producers should reduce their prices or produce better material instead of redoing a cover for the 8th revision of a $600 textbook. At that point, torrenting the e-book is almost the right thing to do. Freedom fosters innovation and intelligence, but so much more: personality, individuality, bravery, commitment, comradery, security, the list goes on and on. 

(I lied, here is another short paragraph) This revelation should be applied to every other aspect of our life, no not should, needs to be, will be, it necessitates it, this application is a moral imperative. The game has changed, why should we still be playing it the same way? so what does this mean? Offerring education online for free like Coursera does? sure, but what can we do? well, what do i do? I think of the implications of my actions. when i give a homeless man a $5 I don't think of the possibility of him buying his daily fix with that, I trust in the undoubtedly falsehood that says that I just had enough money to an under-recognized man who will use that money to start his road to recovery and more, to prosperity and that in doing so he will return the favor a hundred fold, to others in his prior position. But what is I am wrong 999 our of 100 times, is it still worth? Damn right it is. 

So to wrap up this obnoxiously long post in the correction fashion, allow me to use a common internet colloquialism.

TL;DR:  The internet is new, it;'s awesome, it's game changing. get on board and use it for good and you might be surprised by it's effectiveness.

ENTJ: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

This wan't my first MBTI test that I had taken, over the course of highschool I had already taken three, and come up with the exact same result every single time. My personality type is that of an ENTJ, a fieldmarshall. 

I share this personality type with many of the great military leaders throughout history as well as many prominent political figures. My personality type highlights my prowess in leadership, decision making, and problem solving. However, it is also apparent that I struggle in the areas that relate to taking advice from others, compromising, and not getting my way.

If i had to rate this assessment of myself on a scale of 1 to 10, it would probably be an 11. not only does this perfectly describe me, it highlights the smaller parts of my personality that even I wouldn't know how to explain correctly. ENTJ is me, not just my personality but all my actions, thoughts, desires, and dreams.

Now is it bad to just put someone in a box and say, "yeah, that's where they belong" and never think about them or their place again? Yes. But at the same time, not labeling anyone is pointless. Labels highlight who we are, what we do, what distinguishes us from each other, and why we are unique. A label is not something to be shunned and hidden, a proper label is something to be worn like a badge, shone to the world proclaiming your accomplishments and individuality. I am ENTJ.