Legendary Myths

For this post, I used the following article: What It's Like To Go Without Complaining For A Month This article confirmed that people naturally gripe at one another. As I've realized early on from starting college, the easiest way to build friendship and communicate is through something negative. I've met nearly all of my friends in my Capstone class now from just one class: Electrical Circuits for Non-majors. From the way the class was organized to the way topics were discussed, students could complain about that class endlessly. By coming to office hours, I was able to connect with some of these students and start friendships that have flourished. However, this article has taught me how to sparingly complain in order to change my overall outlook on the world. Complaining naturally brings out the negativity in ourselves and others. By changing our outlook to be positive, we can make the best of situations that may arise and change our mindset to combat the negativity aro...

For this post, I used the following article: The Surprising Link Between Laughter And Learning This article confirmed that laughter builds a sense of trust between people. As with my group of friends, when we laugh together, it shows a sign of trust and social connection that we can relate to one another. By being able to share laughter together, it forms a sense of feeling safe within a group and being able to trust them. However, this article also taught me how laughter can open you up to learning. Laughter opens up our capacity to take in and process new information. By doing so, it enables us to learn new things effortlessly and easily recall upon certain memories for future use. I've noticed that studying with a group of people and being able to laugh and crack jokes helps me recall important information later on during a test for example. I'm curious to learn more about how I can incorporate laughter into my method of learning in my schoolwork. An easy way for me to i...

For this post, I used the following article: Prolonged Sitting and Binge TV-Viewing May Take A Toll On Ability To Walk: NPR This article confirmed that excessive amounts of sitting per day can severely affect our overall health and well-being in the long term. We spent approximately an hour in our cars everyday and an average of three hours in class. That's already one-sixth of our entire day that we are essentially inactive and putting ourselves at higher risk of health-related diseases as we age. This article taught me that inactivity due to sitting can have much more severe consequences than I first thought. I did not fully realize that excessive amounts of sitting in our youthful years could actually impair our ability to walk as we age. Of course, I knew that living an active lifestyle was helpful to staying fit, but I had no idea that it could potentially have additional effects on our mobility in the future. I'm curious to learn more about how I can counteract the ex...

For this post, I used the following article: Learning in The Age of Digital Distraction This article confirmed how most modern people are obsessed with checking their phones and computers. As we've evolved from hunters and gatherers for survival, we've become prompted to constantly forage for readily available online information or resources. Especially with the Internet literally at our fingertips, it can often become extremely difficult to concentrate on important tasks since distractions are so prevalent. This article taught me how to optimize strategies to enhance meaningful contact with other people, instead of obligating our free time to social media. Through offering periods of no technology, such as the dinner table or game night, we can build stronger relationships with our friends and family without any fear of distracting ourselves with our phones or other technological devices. I'm curious to learn more about the impact of digital distractions in my daily li...

For this post, I used the following article: It's going to be okay. A cartoon by Matthew Inman. This article confirmed that our journeys on this earth are short. Time is often a limited resource is our busy lives, and we struggle to cram everything into our daily schedules. This usually induces an abnormal amount of stress that we must deal with in our day-to-day lives and stops us from seeing the big picture with everyone we interact with in society. This article taught me to use the most of our lives to help other people. Instead of being absorbed with helping ourselves and our own personal activities, we should take the time to help other people, especially in their time of need. After all, we are all human, and we should help each other to prosper. I'm curious to start opening thinking about how I can contribute to helping other people. I could start small by comforting my friends going through a failed test or bad break-up. By helping other people and showing compassio...

For this post, I used the following article: Stress Management Tips for Students This article confirmed that students are some of the most common victims of stress. The reasons for stress vary widely from assignment deadlines and family expectations to financial expenses and career exploration. Too much stress can cause irritation in behavior and cause people to feel completely overwhelmed and helpless. This article taught me about some techniques that students can use to manage stress. One technique I found interesting was taking one step at a time. By breaking large projects or tasks into smaller sub-tasks, they become more manageable and less overwhelming. Then, by finishing smaller tasks, you'll be more motivated to keep going to finish the entire project or to-do list. I'm curious to learn more about stress management techniques that I could implement in my daily life as a student. I plan to incorporate some of these stress management tips in my weekly schedule to help...

For this post, I used the following article: When Your Brain Doesn't Sleep This article confirmed that a lack of sleep can cause us to lose our attention span in our daily activities. A lack of sleep causes us to tune out whenever we get bored in class as our brain is not well-rested or adequately stimulated. Often, sleep-deprived college students are disengaged from the world and noticeably more lethargic and irritated. This article taught me that a lack of sleep can incur some serious long-term effects as well. I had no idea that a lack of sleep can actually kill brain cells and possibly cause permanent damage to the brain stem. Obviously, the short-term effects of sleep deprivation, such as tiredness, irritation, and lack of focus, were quite evident to me when I didn't get enough sleep the night before a big test or meeting. Now that I know I could potentially cause serious permanent damage, I'll be more careful of how often I stay up late or pull all-nighters. I...

For this post, I used the following article: An Underappreciated Key to College Success: Sleep This article confirmed that many college students often struggle with getting enough sleep for the next day. Between studying and extracurricular activities, the time that we have to rejuvenate ourselves is limited. I remember back in high school, it was easy to get 8 hours of sleep each night. However, now that I'm a senior in engineering, I sometimes struggle to even get 6 or 7 hours of sleep. This article taught me how important sleep is to be successful in college. I had no idea that a lack of sleep was more detrimental than alcohol or drug use towards academic performance. I often found myself sleeping early the night before an exam to be well-rested for the morning. Obviously, I took that sleeping time for granted then, but now I know the true value of being well-rested and how that can greatly affect my overall academic performance. I'm curious to learn more about some tech...

For this post, I used the following article: The Important Habit of Just Starting This article confirmed that procrastination prohibits us from being productive everyday. Often, people procrastinate because they have a fear of starting a large project and become paralyzed in the process.  As discussed in the article, time management can only go so far if it is truly a matter of finding time to work on projects. Psychological effects prevent us from starting projects and hurt our productivity levels. This article taught me that procrastination is not simply putting off things until a later date. The article states that procrastination is also purposefully putting aside important work that will have negative consequences in the future. Like many others, I have also succumbed to procrastination amidst my engineering studies here at the University of Oklahoma. Procrastination greatly impacts my productivity, stress, and even motivation. Even knowing that higher stress levels and les...

For this post, I used the following article: How to Beat Procrastination  This article confirmed that procrastination greatly impacts our productivity levels in a negative way. When tasked with the burden of completing a certain tasks, we naturally think of countless reasons to defer it and avoid it altogether. Personally, I have suffered from procrastination during my Professional Development class when it came time to writing our project papers. After completing the presentations, I found myself thinking of countless excuses to not focus on writing the papers. I found myself performing other coursework for other classes instead of writing the project papers. However, this article taught me that doing other tasks to be productive is still a form of procrastination. While we prioritize other tasks to cross off our to-do list, we still neglect to perform the very tasks that we opted to avoid. So while we feel productive by accomplishing other tasks, we are actually hurting our pr...

For this post, I used the following article: Four Questions to Help You Overcome Procrastination This article confirmed that procrastination prevents people from starting on important tasks and assignments. It's the voice in your head that convinces you to put tasks off until the last minute because you would rather play video games or watch a movie. Personally, this was an issue that I dealt with for a while earlier in my collegiate career. I often found myself making excuses to put off doing work, greatly affecting my coursework progress. However, this article taught me how to be optimistic about starting a complex project. By starting a project, I can make some progress towards the completion of the project which will help further motivate me to finish. After starting the project, I can then break the project into smaller, manageable sub-tasks that I can easily accomplish in one sitting. This will greatly help my procrastination and motivate me to finish the entire project. ...

For this post, I used the following article: Students are most creative at lunchtime, study suggests This article confirmed that student academic performance typically decreases after lunch time. I have had personal experience with this phenomenon. I find myself in classes after lunch, feeling tired and unfocused. Often, I have to urge myself to stay awake and pay attention. I found that classes in the late afternoons were especially difficult for me to concentrate since they immediately followed my lunch period. As such, I had to work even harder outside of class in order to learn the material. This article also taught me how midday activities foster creativity from students. Midday activities during lunchtime demonstrates increased alertness, arousal, and overall positive effects. I haven't realized it until I read this article, but I often find myself during lunchtime to be more social and involved in conversation and attentiveness. As such, I'm curious to learning more ...

For my Pomodoro experiment, I used my phone to set a timer for 25 minutes. When my timer rang as I was working through my readings for my Leadership and Management class, I took a short break to relax. I spent some time browsing social media on my phone, answering texts, and watching some interesting YouTube videos. Although, perhaps I spent too much time taking a break from studying. Often, I found myself distracted away from studying for 20-30 minute long intervals. Maybe I should set a timer for my breaks too. Overall, I found that these timekeeping strategy helped me focus more on my readings and actually capture more of the detail and context that the author intended. The Pomodoro definitely helped me keep my attention during my readings. Although, I found myself looking at the timer often to see how much time was remaining until my next break. It was definitely an effective strategy to help me focus and be more productive. However, I would probably hide my phone somewhere so that...

My initial approach to scheduling time to work on this class's assignments revolved any free time I had outside of classes. I am typically on campus early in the day so I set aside time on Monday and Tuesday to work on this class's assignments. Additionally, since I have no classes scheduled on Wednesday of every week, I scheduled to finish up this class's weekly assignments at that point. Since I am also doing extra credit assignments to get ahead in the class and potentially finish early, I also have work on scheduling time to do those assignments every week. Since each week might have irregular scheduling due to my Capstone class and related activities, I have decided to just do the extra credit assignments in any free time I may find and follow my original proposed schedule for core assignments. I don't plan on making any changes to my existing schedule next week since I have already found that it works really well with my class schedule. Let's hope this all wor...