It has been an interesting quarter. Adjusting to a new school, new classes, new friends– it’s been a bit of a rollercoaster ride. Coming out on the other side however, it’s easy to recognize that while it may have been a nightmare at times, this rollercoaster has allowed me to grow and develop into a better, more well-rounded person.

This journal can be viewed as a small subset of the quarter as a whole. Writing it has been a struggle—frustrating, stressful—but also it has been a great learning process, and in the end, highly rewarding.

Having almost never posted anything online publicly, no less an entire blog, the process of turning private writing into writing for all to see has been challenging. For most of my life my writing has been something I’ve been highly self-conscious about. The only times I would generally allow people to see what I was writing was when I had to submit assignments to my teachers and professors. The prospect of showing my writing to the whole world makes me feel apprehensive to say the least. However, I must remind myself that I am a college student at a highly esteemed institute of higher education, and, when put in such a setting the only possible way to thrive is to dive right in, push your limits, and get out of your bubble of comfort. That is what I am doing now, so here goes.

With no prompt to guide me in this entry, I discuss motivation and how it can be difficult to find it when the finish line is in sight.

I’m pretty burnt-out on this quarter, it’s been long considering how short it’s been. I feel ready to just give up but I know that I just have to push through these next few weeks, buckle down and get things done. It’s hard to find the motivation at this point which is kind of strange considering how close I am. I guess it makes sense though, this mentality can be applied to a lot of things in my life, for instance, exercise. When I can see the finish line, or the end of a set, or the last 10m of the field in a sprint set, I lose a lot of motivation. Despite the fact that I know I am physically capable of completing it, there is a mental block that is put up that tells me to just quit. It is much the same with this quarter, now that the end is nearly here, I can’t help but want to just lay down and give up. So, what is the solution? Step up, buckle down, and finish the set, the sprint, the quarter.

In this world it can often be easy to get lost in all of the negative things that we hear about on the news. In reality, no matter how bad things get here, it’s all just a matter of never losing sight of how truly blessed we are for many of the things we take for granted. This class took place the day after Trump was elected president. It was an emotional day for many people, including myself. This entry deals with some of the emotions that were felt that day, and thoughts about what the coming years will bring to this country.

The question today asks what we’re anxious about and what we are hopeful about. I definitely appreciate the opportunity to reflect on this right now in light of recent happenings in life, the country and the world. Trump is the new president which is terrifying. This prospect makes me feel a variety of emotions, I would say predominately I feel shame—shame for being an American, shame to live in this country that was once considered to be the one of the greatest civilizations, and is now a laughing stock around the world. And lastly shame in my fellow Americans who would choose to have a leader who stands for many of the things that I, and other members of my faith and community abhor—racism, bigotry, narcissism, and an overall disrespect for anyone who doesn’t share the same beliefs.

In my opinion, it is of the utmost importance to allow people their own ideology and way of thinking, it is just when that ideology conflicts with morals, with human rights, and with other people’s rights to do what they want to do that problems arise. Hopefully over the next 4 years we can see greater unity within our country, and not the polarity that we have been experiencing in recent years. It looks bleak, but only time will tell.

Doubt can be crippling at times. In this entry I discuss my doubt about my research proposal. At the time of writing it I was very nervous about how it would turn out and be evaluated. It all comes back to my doubt about my writing abilities, I don’t feel as though I am a good writer and it causes a lot of anxiety when I have to submit assignments. As it turned out, I may not have written the best proposal that the world has ever known, but it was in the ballpark, and for the sake of learning and this class, that’s what really matters.

I feel like my proposal is horrible. I don’t know why, maybe I didn’t put enough effort into it or organize it well enough. It feels very much like a rough draft. I’ll be curious to see what the feedback I get on it, it’s been a long time since I’ve been evaluated in my writing and I feel as though I’m not very good at it. I also have some doubts about how I’m going to set up my survey. I think it won’t be too difficult to write but I do have some concerns about defining terms and making it an actual effective survey. I guess it’s just another challenge to overcome so might as well be positive and looked forward to it.

This entry discusses how the research forum aided in the writing process.

The prompt today asked us to think of what ways utilizing the research forum helped in developing our writing processes. Some of the understandings that I’ve come to after our research forum pertain to the way that I will end up structuring my survey and questions that I will ask. I also realized the importance of writing an outline for my paper rather than just diving in and trying to do it all in one swoop. Creating an outline will be a great route to take and will help to negate some of the stress that I feel currently. I came to these realizations just by talking with my group and asking them what kinds of strategies they generally implement in their early stages of writing. By doing this I was able to get a different perspective from what I am accustomed to, but from my peers, rather than professors or online sources.

This entry discusses my reasons for picking the topic that I chose for my research paper.

The question in today’s class is “what are your personal reasons for doing the research you are doing” it’s rather thought provoking because I haven’t really considered this question since I’ve been thinking about my topic. I suppose that the reason for picking my topic is 1. Because I have recently been super fascinated with Game Theory and wanted to somehow integrate some of the concepts of it into my paper, and 2. More importantly for a large majority of my life I have been thinking about altruism and selflessness, not necessarily in great depth but it has always been a topic that has been somewhat thought provoking for me. Doing this project will allow me to learn more about altruism and how it can influence the way that people perceive their surroundings, while also gaining some surface insight into some of the broader aspects of Game Theory.

This entry deals with the idea of bias in research papers and discusses ways to limit bias, as well as asks the question of whether bias can ever be fully eradicated or if it will always be present to some degree.

I am starting to look forward to writing this research paper, now that I have at least a general idea of what I want to write about the prospect seems pretty exciting. One of my concerns however is how to keep it as unbiased as possible; specifically because I have a pretty strong opinion about what I’m planning to write about, as well as an expectation of what my results will yield. With peer review and careful, deliberate thought I think I can do a decent job of keeping my writing relatively unbiased. In reality however, I think that it is impossible to write a completely unbiased paper, or be completely unbiased in any way. We are constantly being influenced, both consciously and subliminally, so how can it be possible to be completely unbiased about anything?

This entry discusses another reading that really resonated with me. This reading was one of the predominate reasons that I was able to enjoy this class so much, it complements Dr. Warwick’s style of teaching extremely well in the sense that she doesn’t want us to write for length, rather, she wants us to write enough for it to be meaningful.

In the reading “Ignorance” was a quote that was made by Pascal was referenced, it went something like “I would have been briefer [in my writing] if I had had more time.” For some strange reason this quote blew my mind. It elicited new ideas in me that were previously undiscovered and unexplored. It seems like, up until now at least, that I have been conditioned to write strictly for a grade and without the freedom to write how I choose, or write on a subject that is interesting to me. Because of this, rather than seeking to minimize the amount of words I use– be concise and both efficient and effective in my writing, I have been writing to simply fulfill word count, to put symbols on a page with little thought to their significance. In reality, the shorter, the more streamline and concise one can be in their writing, the more compelling and influential that writing will be. This is something that I will strive to achieve from now on, and specifically in this class. I’m looking forward to the challenge.

The first entry of the class. I discuss a reading that ended up being one of the most important facets of the entire class. Going forward from this reading, the importance of first order vs. second order writing became clear. Understanding how to apply these two types of writing to my project was one of the most beneficial parts of the entire class.

I thought todays reading was super fascinating and eye opening. The excerpt was called “Teaching Two Kinds of Thinking by Teaching Writing” it essentially discussed creative writing vs. critical writing. It further discussed their uses in the writing process and how each style of writing can be of impactful. To me, the conclusion to the paper was the most interesting portion of the whole article. It concluded by stating that there has been an on-going argument about which style of writing is the most effective and important, when in reality, we should respect the place that each method has in the writing process. Rather than these writing methods being enemies, they should be allies, be compliments to one another. The more you have of one, the more you have of the other.