A Life Update #2

This is a forum on my class’s Human Biology website that I thought I would like to share. Just another life update since we’re on chapter 13 of Learning and Memory. I’m an English major, but I decided to fulfill my prerequisites last since I only found out two years ago that I actually have prerequisites and classes to fulfill. Have fun reading!!!

1. What has prepared you to think about the way you think?
Before I first started this class, I took critical thinking which to my success helped me a lot during the semester to think cognitively and reflect on my abilities to think which of course is metacognition. Through what I understand we have the ability to cognitively think and do what is against the grain meaning question everything and go outside normal thinking but to always think in a respective manner. So, in a way, college has helped me think outside the grain or to think outside of the box. Another example was when I was a young girl, I used to play word games with my mother along with the building blocks she and my father had gotten for me. It helped me to process and to think creatively. So, as I grew older, I reflected more on school and my performance in my classes got better and better until I got my first scrabble set which made me such a good English major. I am an accomplished student and I have to say I have gotten this far and now I have a whole bunch of word app and thinking games on my iphone, which also help me to think cognitively. As for my first Scrabble sets, she and my father supported me by giving me thinking games. My mother also taught me to play cards and as a young woman in her teens I was always the smart one besides my brothers in my family so when I mentioned the fact that I wanted to go to college they surprised me and sent me here.

2. Are you comfortable taking time to reflect on yourself on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis?
I reflect on a weekly basis and sometimes I wish I could reflect on myself at least almost every day if I was not so busy juggling with college and life. Soon I will be juggling with college, life and work as I am headed towards my graduate studies. I think the best part of reflection is the calm and the peace that flows through my mind as I reflect. I lived a pretty good life and I used to reflect by owning a diary of my thoughts. I would write personal letters to myself to encourage me to do my best when my parents were not around.

3. If this isn\\\’t something you do at any regular interval, what are the obstacles to this?
The obstacles to stop reflecting are the fact that in metacognition, the mind feels trapped by certain stimuli which are outside factors meaning the mind is not free to think or indulge in creativity and certain factors like that are friends and their peer pressure which is unhealthy for the brain and also a factor of unhealthy mental stimuli such as bad habits and traits that are picked up from other people. As I see it, they create a barrier that is not metacognition because of the way they think. When we Follow what we think is morale in life we are living up to others’ standards and instead of being mindful, we become mindless. It’s like racism. When we think of someone as an ugly color of skin, we are not thinking outside the box because this person actually matters in life, but we do not see it that way because we are so caught up using racist language in our world that we do not have time to think cognitively about the good traits of that specific color or creed and where they come from therefore, cognitive thinking gives you a locus of respect.

4. What can you do to be more reflective? And what are you willing to do?
To be more reflective I reflect on my life and how the world is doing and how it relates to my life on Guam. So, I comment sometimes on digital media on what I think is wrong and praise what I think is right by reflecting on my values and by what I, myself support. I am willing to be more involved in what I believe in and make my opinions heard and reflect on how to be more open-minded and pay attention to details.

5. Discuss two things you have learned about the brain from the videos and content from this Chapter thus far.
Two things I have learned from the videos and the chapter was that the hippocampus with anti-depressants can make new brain cells with their help and that the brain has many functions in its different parts. What I’ve learned from this chapter is that the sympathetic side of the brain has the sensory skills we need to survive and the parasympathetic halve of the brain relates to maintaining homeostasis.