Metacognition: Crazy Ramblings

"I hate writing essays. I hate writing essays. I hate writing essays. I hate writing essays," was what i told myself after finding out about the short story project- and yes, I know you meant "short story" and not "essay", but to me, they were just the same at that point. Graded writing assignments. Things that i would be judged upon.

So I loathed in having to write this short story. I knew that it was going to take forever. I knew that I was going to struggle with ideas. I knew that I'd almost have nothing to even write about either. I knew I was going to put it off to the last minute, and i knew that it was going to give me an awful headache in the process. Why couldn't i just write about something simple, like birds? My overly-obsessive brain was just going to make the assignment harder on me, and the more i thought of this, the worse it became (it's funny how that works!).

And i do tend to be a little over-obsessive when it comes to writing. I tend to spend hours knit-picking my way through sentences as opposed to letting my thoughts flow freely. I struggle to come up with the perfect ideas. I revise as i go along. I find myself in a slump quite often, and the fact that I get stuck so often reflects my poor sense of organization. I get stuck on words, phrases, ideas, thoughts, and whatever other garbled crap that happens to be floating around in my mind.

So ok, i know, I'm way too hard on myself, but that actually contributes to poor writing, believe it or not. How can one even hope to write when they have such low self-esteem? Sure, he or she may feel free to think that their finished work is crap, but how does one even write when they know ahead of time that it's going to be crap?

I certainly had that notion for my short story, and that notion, I realized, almost pushed me to the brink. It ruined my spirit. It put a damper on the assignment. It also would have fed on itself, had i not overcome it and began writing.

Yes, writing. I've noticed how wonderful it feels is once I actually begin my writing. It's like relief. Releasing built up pressure. Allowing oneself to become absorbed in his work. Ahhh... this writing...it's almost like a drug!

Dialectics: Science vs Religion

Ok, we've heard it before: Science and religion have always contradicted each other. We've heard of the creationism/evolution debate. We know the benefits of both, and we always seem to hear of science gradually replacing old faith.

Then again, i believe that neither science nor religion should replace the other. I believe that there's actually a balance between the two of them. Something akin to yin and yang, perhaps. I mean, after all, it's pretty obvious that science and religion are both equally important in terms of defining human nature.

Science fulfills mankind's natural curiousy, allows us to be independent, and gives us the chance to use logic and reason. It bestows us with knowledge and factual certainty. It controls our lives and provides explanation.

I mean, seriously, we couldn't prove anything without science! How would we even be able to prove something like gravity? We wouldn't, if it wasn't for scientific logic. We wouldn't be able to trust whether objects fell up or down. We wouldn't be able to trust ANY natural forces. We'd begin to doubt our own senses and intuition.


So, with that said, religion gives people something to cling to. It allows us to momentarily forget life's material aspects and connect instead to the spiritual world. It gives people hope as well as fear. It too, answers questions and provides explanation.

Some of these questions include "why are we here?", or "What's the purpose of life?"-- questions that science could never even hope to answer.

Blogging Around: Jamie and Leanne

Jamie wrote a blog post about class discussions and how "graded discussions" ultimately fail their purpose.

Here's what i wrote:

Dear Jamie,

I totally agree. Your blog post reminds me of the stark contrasts that show between alot of our class discussions. If one compared one of our free-flowing english discussions to something that we did from our other class(ie a "graded" discussion), he or she would find a HUGE level of difference in participation.

the subject, for one thing, plays a HUGE role in creating a good discussion. I personally find it easier to discuss a piece of literature as opposed to reading 50 pages of historical documents. I mean, really, there's not much to interpret there. How do you discuss anything that's a simple matter of fact? You don't. You either restate it or talk about something surrounding it.

For a good discussion to work, one must also keep everyone's interests in mind. Everyone has to be keen on discussing the subject. I, for one, am not just going to get up in the middle of class and start talking about birds' mating behavior. That wouldn't go too well.

Leanne wrote about sight and how it greatly affects people's lives.

Here's what i wrote:
Dear Leanne,

Sight is a very interesting sort of perception.

Humans, after all, are largely visual-based creatures. Our eyesight is crucial. We rely on eyesight and vision more than any other sense. An overwhelming majority of our memories tend to be visual. Humans tend to seek visual experiences of everything.

And many of us are so deeply rooted in vision, that the thought of being blind is almost unimaginable. Like, how do people LIVE like that? It's like pac-man being born without a mouth!! (my own crappy analogy)

So in any case, my argument is that vision gives us purpose. Like you said, we have to see to believe. People who go through their entire lives being oblivious to the world are not helping it or even being a part of it. If people didn't SEE horrible things such as genocide and slaughter going on in the world, there would be nothing done about it. The world would suck.

And the world CAN be beautiful too, by the way, but it's not going to be that way unless people actually try acknowledge and fix some of our major problems.

Closing your eyes is like shutting yourself up in a little cage.