Journal 8: The activity I went to this week was a club tennis practice. This activity was held at the UNE tennis courts. I really enjoyed playing tennis again and I’m happy I finally had an excuse to get some exercise. I haven’t really done any exercise since I came to UNE, due to a combination of a lack of motivation and other responsibilities. Outside of tennis the only other sports I do are cross country and track and getting the motivation to run is a lot harder than getting motivated to play tennis. I will be attending more club tennis practices in the future, because I love tennis and the other people doing club tennis seem really nice and fun.
Journal 9: Week 4 as a college student was pretty so-so. My classes are getting harder, but that’s to be expected. There is one class I picked that I thought would be interesting, but at best it has been a chore, and at worst I’ve been bored to tears. Siena is a fine residence hall, the whole place smells nice, except for the bathrooms. Every week there’s a new mystery smell in the bathroom, or a mystery stain on a toilet seat. Also the closest bathroom to my room only has one stall with a working lock, which is really annoying. The only concern I have for this semester is all the reading for all my classes. I’ve always been a slow reader, especially when I don’t care about what I’m reading, so by the end of this semester I’m either going to be a better reader or I will have lost my mind. For accomplishments, I consider my performance in chemistry to be one.
Journal 10: The essay We Are Each Other’s Business tackles the subject of religious pluralism. The writer, Eboo Patel, is an American Muslim who grew up in a religiously diverse friend group. Patel shares how even though his friend group was religiously diverse, they rarely acknowledged their differences in faith. This caused Patel to not stand up for his Jewish friend as anti-semitism infected their high school. The main idea of this essay was that religious pluralism can only fully be embraced when we acknowledge and embrace our different faiths instead of silently coexisting. A line I really liked from this was “We live in a world where the forces that seek to divide us are strong. To overcome them, we must do more than simply stand next to one another in silence.” I think this is a very eloquent line that conveys clearly the message of the essay. This also reminds me of that performance art piece “He Will Not Divide Us” by Shia LaBeouf which kind of went horribly wrong in a spectacular way. I couldn’t find anything I disagreed with or thought was confusing in this essay.
Journal 11: Week five was harder than the other weeks. This week I had my first exam, but it was open note, so we could have a page of notes for the exam. So your success really hinges on how much you want to cram onto one piece of paper, unless you want to memorize the material, which I didn’t want to do. My other classes are going okay, and my dorm is pretty nice. As I was writing this my dorm room filled with skunk fumes which would be a funny coincidence if it didn’t smell so bad. The only anxieties I have right now is for my biology exam on Thursday, which I’ve been putting off studying for. I am proud of surviving a chemistry exam, which is kind of a benchmark achievement but whatever.
Journal #12: The Mountain Disappears is an essay written by Leonard Bernstein, and communicates his belief that humans are amazing, indomitable creatures. He writes how when a human climbs a mountain, “the mountain disappears,” signifying that the mountain is now nothing due to mankind’s unrelenting spirit of perseverance. Bernstein also talks about how one man can make a chance, writing “one human being who meets with injustice can render invalid the entire system which has dispensed it.” Bernstein goes on to write about how we must as a society respect and be kind to other people whom we disagree with, and persevere with our indomitable spirits to overcome the social and political strifes of the time period. There are many things in this essay that stick out to me. A line that I really liked in this essay was “If we believe that man can never achieve a society without wars, then we are condemned to wars forever.” I like how this line communicates the dangers of thinking in this violent way that a lot of people seem to be embracing today. I believe violence is the easy solution, it’s much easier to throw stones than to make meaningful, peaceful change. This is also why I believe a lot of violence happens, because when a group believes that their acts of peaceful reform are in vain, they may turn to violence because they see it as the only option. Something that I don’t inherently disagree with but I don’t believe is entirely true is the line in which the author states “one human being who meets with injustice can render invalid the entire system which has dispensed it.” Since this was written in the 1950s, a lot of time has passed since this essay was written, and during that time there was a pretty monumental person who stood up to injustice. Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press in 1971, which detailed how the US intentionally involved itself in Vietnam in order to spark a conflict which would drag us into the Vietnam War. These documents revealed that the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson lied to both Congress and the American people. Although Daniel Ellsberg had undeniable proof of government corruption, this barely affected the Nixon Administration. There were probably tons of other times in the last 75 years where people stood up to corruption and were victorious, but it’s a shame that in our proud Democracy that clear signs of complete injustice and technical high treason were overlooked. Another thing that caught my attention that I thought was kinda funny in retrospect was when the author wrote “I believe that [America] is at a critical point in this moment and that she needs us to believe more strongly than ever before in her and in one another.” This line talks about the social and political divide in America, but this was written in the 50s, meaning it was all gonna get a lot worse over the next two decades before everything calmed down.
Journal 13: For my brochure project, I have currently reached out to a member of the UNE library staff in hopes of securing an interview. I sent an email to Ms. Cabral, a research and teaching librarian at the UNE library. I have not completed anything else yet.
Journal 14: Between last week and now, I have reached out to two more library staff members for interviews, as Ms. Cabral wouldn’t be able to meet unless I waited until after this upcoming long weekend, which would be too long to wait. I reached out to Ms. Dyer, the dean of library services, and Ms. Durney, a scholarly communications librarian. At this point, Ms. Durney has agreed to an interview, and Ms. Cabral is asking for more details about the project. I also went out with my group today and took pictures for our brochure.
Journal 15: The last two weeks were very strange. My workload is increasing and I’m trying to catch up. My roommate has decided he’s moving out, which is fine but also he didn’t tell me a goddamn thing about wanting to move out until he’d gone through most of the process of moving out and arranged a meeting for us to meet with our RA. Seriously, what the hell is that about? I get that we haven’t ever meshed well together, we never really communicated about anything, but goddamn at least tell me that you want to move out before you start the process. He hadn’t vocalized a single complaint about anything I did in the last month and a half of us living together, so this news came as a surprise. Since he’d already gone through most of the process of moving out, he’d already arranged for us to meet with our RA the next day, which I did. The RA emailed us both about some “conflicts” that he’d heard about. That grinds my gears because why the hell did the RA hear about these conflicts before me, the guy who he’s living with?! I only learned about why my roommate wanted to move out at the RA meeting, where I learned it was a conflict of schedule. Apparently he didn’t like that I woke up earlier than him on some days, and I guess that makes sense because he has a job some days and me getting up in the morning may wake him up when he doesn’t have class, but also this is college, you’re not going to have the same schedule as your roommate. This reason he gave me for why he wanted to move out is probably bogus, but I don’t really care, I just want him to move out now. We never communicate, living with this dude is like living alone except I feel bad for making noise and staying up late. It’s like my dorm room is haunted by a ghost, but instead of a malevolent spirit it’s some dude who doesn’t always say hi to me when I come back from classes and say hi to him. I don’t wish ill upon my roommate, he’s probably a cool guy, but I’m tired of living with him, and he’s probably tired of living with me too. I get jealous when I hear about people talking about how they miss their roommates, because when mine goes home for the weekend I celebrate. Sorry that this journal was more of a vent than a reflection, but this whole ordeal pisses me off. I hope my roommate doesn’t read this.
Journal 16: This last week I conducted both of my interviews and got some juicy quotes for the brochure. I interviewed Ms. Durney and Ms. Cabral over Zoom which was fun, and I wrote the transcripts for the two meetings a few days later. They gave very interesting insights about civic engagement at UNE. I don’t know what else I can do to prepare for this Friday besides figure out what I’m going to be saying about the brochure. Paige has kind of become the brochure organizer and we’ve given her our pieces to put together for this project. I hate public speaking though, not reading off of a card is extremely difficult to me, but I gotta do what I gotta do.
Journal 17: For the brochure project, I did the section of how civic engagement is implemented at UNE as well as interview Elizabeth Dyer, the Dean of Library Services.
Journal 18: The group project went well I think. My group was cooperative and efficient, though we did a lot of the work at the last minute. I’m very scared of public speaking, and I’ve never done a presentation without a script before, but I think I made up for my lackluster presentation by gathering most of the examples of civic engagement at UNE for our brochure. I think I did alright with the parts I had to present, even though I think I was shaking during my parts.
Journal 19: Week eight was painful for me. I kept having to stay up to complete assignments, and a lot of my assignments were done at the last minute. I now will be keeping better track of my assignments because all that work really sucked, but also the only reason I had so much work was because I decided to have fun during the long weekend for two days when I went home and do stuff with friends and family, so I don’t really regret it. My roommate finally moved out Friday which was a nice cherry on top of the week, because now I have a single and it feels so good.
Journal #20: I don’t want my professor to be using AI to evaluate my work. By coming to this university, I am paying to be taught by professors who are very knowledgeable in their fields, so why would I want an AI to be evaluating my work. What’s the point of being taught by a biology professor, who has several accolades that make them a reputable and worthy teacher of the advanced concepts of biology, if they’re going to have an AI look over my work instead of them themselves. If I do a writing assignment on a certain topic, I want my professor to personally look over it, as I believe their input matters more as an expert in their field than a robot masquerading as a professor. If it’s a multiple choice assignment then I don’t care if AI is used to evaluate it, but why would you even use AI with that when it barely requires any labor and since there are machines built specifically for grading multiple choice assignments. Maybe I’m jaded about AI because it’s been shoved down my throat recently. A lot of websites I go on have AI features, pointless shoehorned applications of AI that serve no purpose other than to justify millions of dollars put into AI research by these fad-chasing companies. There’s probably like six different AI tools that Google shoved into Youtube, and only one of them is good. Why the hell would I want an AI summary of a video when I could just watch the video? That’s the whole point of the goddamn website. Some people are saying there’s an “AI bubble” similar to the housing bubble or the .com bubble, and I hope it pops, because unlike the housing bubble which affected ordinary people, I think this would only affect the soulless companies trying to shove this new technology into every crevice of the internet.
Journal #21: Week 9 as a college student was fine. I had a chemistry exam this week, and that was the only really big thing that stressed me out this week. I’ve fallen into a bad habit of not studying for exams until the day before the exam, which is partly because every class I have an exam in is on a day right after a free day so I spend the whole free day studying. I did this with the chemistry exam I took on Thursday, I did this with the sociology exam I took last week, and I just did this with the biology quiz I took today (monday). This is probably unsustainable and bad for my mental health to experience such a large amount of stress in one day, but it’s worked so far, still I’m probably going to change the way I study before it’s too late.
Journal #3 (forgot to upload): For this out of the classroom activity I went and played tennis. It was a lot of fun and the first time I really got out and did some exercise. I am hoping to join club tennis soon, but for now I’m content. I’ll try to do some running as well in the future.
Journal #22: Week 10 was fine, my work is mellowing out but I’m also not working as hard which is not the best. My classes are fine, my dorm is fine, but I wish I was more content. I’m happy here, but I was happier when I was home. I’ve accepted that I’m less happy, but I still miss being happier than I am right now. I don’t feel like myself a lot, tennis is the time where I really act as who I think I am, but outside of that in my classes I feel weird.
Journal #7 (forgot to upload): Week 3 has been stressful as hell for me which is probably my fault. I keep getting blindsided by assignments and I’m struggling to keep up, I feel overwhelmed. The residence halls are fine, I can’t complain. This term I’m mostly looking forward to adapting to this new world. I am very anxious about this semester, I feel like I’m always running out of time for assignments, and the days just keep going by quicker and quicker. I don’t have any accomplishments I’m proud of this semester sadly.
Journal #6 (forgot to upload): The activity I attended this week was a meeting for club ultimate frisbee. This meeting was to see if our forms were in order, go over safety information, and to learn how to handle concussions. I thought this activity was useful, as I learned my physician had forgotten to check something off on my physical. I’m likely to attend another event like this in the future, as I think they’re mandatory for club sports.
Journal #5 (forgot to upload): Jay Alison’s section of This I Believe is an introduction to the modern This I Believe project. The big idea in this introduction is that every essay submitted to the program is significant. A large portion of the introduction is spent detailing the trial that is conveying your beliefs into an essay. A concept I liked in this essay is that the essays in this book convey a lifetime of information: “It is interested not in what can be learned in a moment but over a lifetime.” I never thought of how the essayists in this book are writing about the beliefs they formed over the course of their entire lives, and I find that really incredible. A segment I found confusing was when the news was brought up. “More and more, news output is based not so much on the events of the day but those of the moment.” This part just didn’t click for me, I don’t know what they’re trying to say here. The essay “Be Cool to the Pizza Dude” is an essay about treating others as equals, as far as I can discern. The main idea of this essay is that it’s wrong to judge people based on their intelligence, strength, or the job they have. A section that I really like and I feel encapsulates the message of this essay is where the essayist describes how their respect for others is how they weigh themselves as a human being. “My measurement as a human being, my worth, is the pride I take in performing my job – any job – and the respect with which I treat others.” I also appreciate how the essayist disses CEO’s which I think is very funny. The only thing that confuses me about this essay is the concept of pizza delivery cars having sirens like a police cruiser. I live in a place where there’s no pizza delivery, so the concept of a pizza delivery car having a siren is very absurd to me.
Journal #4 (forgot to upload): Week one of college was tough, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The classes I’m taking seem hard, but I’m doing all right for now. The residence halls are nice, except that the bathroom closest to my dorm room smells like sewage a lot of the time. I’m mostly looking forward to becoming more independent this semester. I am nervous about how hard my classes will become once they start ramping up, which I will hopefully be able to deal with. I am proud of myself for joining club tennis and club ultimate frisbee, they’re good excuses to get some exercise and meet new people.
Journal #2 (forgot to upload): My first week at college has been a trial, but I assume it has been this way for many of my class as well. The first three days were especially rough, with having to adapt to living with a roommate, being unable to make any new friends, and constantly missing my friends and family. Things have gotten better though over the last five days, I’ve gotten into a groove, adapted pretty well to living with another person, and though I still haven’t found any buddies at UNE, I’ve made a commitment to engaging in events around campus. The residence halls are fine, although they are very hot. The fluorescent lights in my dorm room seem to exacerbate this problem, so we usually keep them off. My room also smells rancid, probably from body odor. My classes don’t seem too bad so far. I have four science classes this semester, two of them labs, but I’ve only had the non-lab classes so far. This term I’m looking forward to learning more about chemistry, biology, and hopefully meeting some friends. The only anxiety I have at this point is that when my chemistry lab gets going it’s going to break me down with work.
Journal #1 (forgot to upload): In the forward to This I Believe, Studs Terkel sets up what this anthology book will be composed of. Terkel brings up the beliefs of people such as James Cameron, Andrew Sullivan, and Ed Murrow. This forward is formatted like a brain dump of thoughts and ideas from Terkel, as he brings up subjects like the nature of truth, being agnostic, and the value of community. I believe the main idea of this forward is presenting the format of this anthology book, which is a collection of essays about the opinions and ideas of many people throughout history. James Cameron’s statement after being condemned as being non-objective stood out to me: “‘I may not have always been satisfactorily balanced; I always tended to argue that objectivity was of less importance than the truth.’” I picked this line out because I believe what he’s saying is true. What I don’t understand is the line “perhaps I do believe there is a God deposited in each of us ever since the Big Bang.” To me this is a bunch of mumbo jumbo. The afterword of This I Believe is a history of the radio program This I Believe. The main idea of this afterword is to convey the significance of This I Believe, which I believe it effectively does so. In the foreword there was an excerpt that grabbed my attention: the series took a decidedly more populist tack, featuring essays from cabdrivers, teachers, longshoremen, nurses, Pullman porters, incarcerated convicts, and, indeed, housewives.” This surprised me, as I’ve never really heard of a radio program broadcasting the views of the average person, especially since the program was originally meant to broadcast the beliefs of well-known people. There’s nothing in this section that I disagree with or that confuses me, but the fact that Ward Wheelcock disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle strikes me as interesting: “On January 18, 1995, the boat disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle.” There’s nothing supernatural about the Bermuda Triangle so I don’t understand why boats kept disappearing inside it.
In-Class Writing Assignment #1: A meaningful moment for me which helped shape my values was when I realized I had been taking my friends for granted. When I was in 8th grade there was a period of time where I thought I was too good to be friends with my current group of buddies. I would express to them that I was tired of being around them, and sometimes during recess I’d abandon them to wander alone. I also had an attitude around them that suggested that I was better than them. This came to a head when my buddies and I were calling on Discord, an application similar to Zoom or Skype, while playing video games. Eventually all of my friends left the call except for one named Nick. I was confused why everyone left the call so suddenly, so I asked Nick where everyone went. Nick let me know that a group chat had been created without me, and that my friends had migrated over to that group chat to call. This revelation shocked me, and I was furious at my friends for excluding me. In my anger I pondered why my friends would exclude me, and only then did I realize how I’d been treating them. I reflected on my jerkish behavior towards them, and while I was still mad, I understood their motives. This experience made me realize I’d been taking my friends for granted. I expected my friends to stick with me even though I pushed them away repeatedly. After this I went through a major attitude adjustment, as I attempted to repair my damaged friendships, in which I succeeded. While I’m not still friends with some of those people in my 8th grade circle, two of them continue to be some of my closest friends.
In-Class Writing Assignment #2: A belief differs from an opinion or value, but all three terms are closely related. A belief is something that you think is true. This is similar to the definition of an opinion, which is something that you believe to be true, but I believe opinions describe less concrete beliefs. Every opinion is a belief, but not every belief is an opinion. If I were to say “I believe helium atoms have two protons” it would sound right, but if I said “in my opinion helium atoms have two protons” it would sound weird. This is why believe opinions describe less verifiable beliefs, while beliefs in general cover all things one holds to be true. A belief differs from a value similarly to how they differ from opinions. All values are beliefs, but not all beliefs are values. Values are beliefs that contribute to your character and define who you are. To communicate this point, I will describe a significant moment in my life when my values were defined. I had no interest in a scientific career until I took CP Bio in high school, but afterwards my life trajectory took a major shift. I was amazed by the microscopic world of biology, the chemical building blocks of life captured my imagination. From then on the importance of science has been a core value of mine, and is the reason I’m pursuing a degree in biochemistry. To explain further what a belief is to me, a belief is a truth one holds that can be either subjective or rooted in truth. “Beliefs are choices. No one has the authority over your personal beliefs. Your beliefs are in jeopardy only when you don’t know what they are” (Allison, 6). This quote speaks true to me, as I also believe nobody should be able to change your beliefs. Allison also writes about how some writers dissect their own long-held beliefs. “Others peel the onion of what they’re taught to believe, what they think they should believe, and even what they always believed they would believe” (Allison, 3-4). This is a profound thought to me, as I’d never considered examining my intrinsic beliefs.
In-Class Writing Assignment #3: Steve Porter’s 50 Percent Theory is a way to think about the recurring highs and lows of life. This theory states that your life will have constant repeating cycles of equally good and bad stretches of time, a stretch of time being a day, month, year, etc. What qualifies as a good or bad time is relative, as this is based on your individual perception of what is normal. While I appreciate how this theory helps to digest the fact that there will be hard times in the future, as they’re inevitable, I disagree with this theory on the idea that the good cycles of life will equal the bad. This theory is based on the idea that 50% of the time life will be good, and for the other 50% life will be bad (thus the 50% Percent Theory). I don’t believe in this, as in my personal experience, I’ve seen the hand of fate give many people much more hard times than good times. One of my closest friends has had a very rough upbringing, which even by his standards has had more lows than highs. Another personal example I can think of is my own life, which has far more highs than lows. By my own standards of what is normal, my life has been mostly free from hardships, besides schoolwork. The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do is transition to college, even then I consider that transition a minor hardship. This is why I don’t believe in the 50 Percent Theory.
In-Class Writing Assignment #4: The core value I picked from UNE’s “core value” list was “Community and Belonging.” I picked this value because it’s the most prevalent value out of the list at UNE. To me, community and belonging means not only accepting, but embracing our differences. Community and belonging doesn’t mean being blind to our differences, but acknowledging and embracing them. I’ve seen this value mostly play out with the diversity of gender or sexual orientation. There are many all-gender bathrooms around campus, which promote the inclusion of non-cisgender students. I’ve also heard there is a dorm for the LGBTQ+ called the Lavander Dorm. I like this, as my dorm only has male / female bathrooms, and some non-cisgender people may be uncomfortable using those bathrooms. A value that seems to be missing from this list that I’ve seen actively upheld at UNE is the accommodation of the needs of all students. This value may be grouped with “Student Centeredness” but I feel like it should be better communicated based on how seriously student accommodations are taken. My professors have been super helpful to me with my accommodations, with one even helping me schedule time in the testing center for a quiz. With how serious UNE handles student accommodations, I think this value should be presented on their “Core Values” list.
In-Class Writing Assignment #5: Using AI in an academic setting is controversial, as there’s a constant debate on whether or not using AI in school is cheating. I lean more towards believing the use of AI in school is cheating, but not in all instances. I can understand that since AI has been shoehorned into every internet browser, it’s hard not to use AI for assignments. I will give two examples of assignments I’ve gotten in the past to illustrate my point. Using AI in math is a grey area for me. During AP-Calc, I regularly had questions that I didn’t understand, and in this context I believe AI is helpful. I also had a calculus teacher who was constantly willing to help me with difficult problems, so I didn’t need AI. Where I think AI is morally grey is with looking up the answers to math problems. I believe this is a crutch that makes people less self-sufficient in math, you should be confident enough to answer without the guarantee it will be correct. Using AI in english is cheating, it defeats the whole point of the class. In AP English Literature and Composition, I had to write a senior thesis. My topic was “how writers use the medium of imaginative literature to pose moral questions about technology.” I learned a lot while writing this, and rigorously edited and revised my thesis until the day before my last day of highschool. This assignment taught me a lot, and I created something I was really proud of. Now if I used AI to write this, I would have learned nothing, I would have earned nothing, and I would have nothing to be proud of. AI grammar tools are fine to use in my opinion, but they aren’t generative AI, grammar AI’s have been around much longer than generative AI’s.
Journal #23: Disrupting My Comfort Zone is an essay by acclaimed film and television producer Brian Grazer. This essay was about how stepping out of your comfort zone is a great way to spur growth and learn new things. In the essay, Brian Grazer describes how he pushed himself to meet a variety of different people, like CIA agents, trial lawyers, biologists, forensic anthropologists, and somehow Fidel Castro. How do you even go about meeting Fidel Castro? The CIA couldn’t figure out how to kill that guy for decades but somehow Brian Grazer is able to get close to him? A line that stood out to me was “And to paraphrase a biologist I once met, if you’re not growing, you’re dying.” I really like this line because it applies ideas of evolution to stagnation through lack of growth. I don’t disagree with anything in this essay, the only weird thing is the part about the guy who created the hydrogen bomb, Edward Teller. It’s very strange that after a year of pestering he still thought this interview was worth it. There are also weird details where the author points out how Teller is unfamiliar with American pop-culture, like when he writes “However, he’d never heard of me” or “I’m not that interesting to a physicist with no taste for our pop culture.” I don’t know if he was expecting this Turkish dinosaur to care about him or his work, apparently after looking it up Teller ridiculed Grazer because he didn’t care about his work in entertainment, implying that he brought up his line of work to this dude.
Journal #24: The constant theme of my “beyond the classroom” and “beyond your dorm” journals is not really growth but more adaptation. I haven’t really grown into the person I wanted to be at college, I don’t really have any friends, I’m not very interactive with the UNE community, and I think I’m just less happy here than I was at home. I’m not depressed here, I just was happier when I was with my friends back in high school. That’s why I say I’ve adapted instead of grown here, because I haven’t grown really, I’ve just adapted to this new environment that I’m living in. I have grown in some ways, before this I’d never spent more than two weeks without seeing my parents and I hadn’t had to some chores that I now do to keep my room neat. But beyond that I haven’t really grown much since I got here. I just don’t feel like myself here, I act like a more diluted person here than how I used to be.
Journal #25: Week 11 was fine, feels the same as last week, every week feels the same. I didn’t have much work so I mostly slacked off this week, which was fun but also I feel like I should be doing more. Did good on my chem quiz this week, I redeemed myself from last week. Nothing much else to say.
Journal #26: No more club tennis, it’s too cold and we barely ever practiced anyway whoops. Chemistry quiz went well again I think, stoichiometry is easy once you figure it out. Once again I’ve been slacking off this week. Next week I have a biology exam, which I’m actually going to properly study for this time. Finals are coming up after Thanksgiving break but I think I’m ready. I can’t wait for Thanksgiving break I got to get out of here.
Journal #27: For this journal, I read “Talking with the Sun” by Joy Harjo. The main idea of this piece is the comparison of the intimacy Indians have with the universe to the connection between humans and the environment, as well as simply conveying the spiritual and cultural importance of these century old Indian ceremonies. The messaging about the climate is pretty straightforward, message was solidified to me with the following paragraph: “the quantum physicists have it right; they are beginning to think like Indians: Everything is connected dynamically at an intimate level. When you remember this, then the current wobble of the earth makes sense. How much more oil can be drained without replacement, without recipocrity?” (Page 113). The other theme of conveying the ancestral and spiritual significance of Indian rituals to the sun comes with many lines but for me the following is the most significant: “after dancing all night in a circle we realize that we are a part of a larger sense of stars and planets dancing with us overhead. When the sun rises at the apex of the ceremony, we are renewed.” (Page 112). I really liked this essay as although I’d heard about the sun god before, I’ve never had a first-hand account of why ceremonies honoring the sun are so significant to these people.
Journal #28: For a while now I’ve bounced the idea around in my head that the future is as fixed as the past. When I say I think the future is fixed and unchangeable, I’m not referring to fateism, which is the theological belief that god is the arbiter of the future. My beliefs align more with the deterministic school of thought, the idea that the future is determined by preceding events in a never-ending butterfly effect. Following this school of thought, every decision we make is already determined by preceding events, which does make sense to me as the human brain at its core functions as a computer. The brain consciously and unconsciously computes information that it’s given and makes a decision. There is no randomness in how we process information, therefore all of our decisions are based purely on preceding events. These preceding events can vary from someone punching you in the gut to the tiniest movements of chemicals in the brain, and these events themselves are dictated by preceding events.
One of the reasons why this idea weighs so heavily on my mind is because it can’t be proven or disproven. The theory states that there’s only one decision you’ll take in any given circumstance due to cause and effect, but that’s impossible to prove or disprove, because in the end you will take a single decision, which could be the only possible decision you could’ve made, or it could’ve been one of millions. This theory also goes against chaos theory, which states that all natural systems are inherently unpredictable due to the amount of variables present in natural systems, but then again fractals, a commonly used example of chaos theory, are famous for following patterns. The main reason this theory weighs heavily on my mind is the idea that it invalidates the idea of self-determinism. After stewing over this for a long time, I came to the conclusion that determinism doesn’t invalidate self-determinism because we still make decisions ourselves, these decisions are just the only decisions we would ever have made due to cause and effect. By determinism, I was always destined to forget my keys in my dorm room when I went to tennis practice that one day, but it was also my fault for forgetting them like a dope as well.
The theory of determinism no longer brings me a feeling of dread, as I’ve reconciled my beliefs in regard to the theory. Determinism says that there’s only one outcome based on all preceding events, but it doesn’t mean free will doesn’t exist. Determinism doesn’t mean you have no control over your actions because they’re predetermined, it means that the action you take in a situation is the only action you would’ve taken. After reconciling my beliefs, I’ve come to believe that the future is dictated by determinism, and it’s just as unchangeable as the past.
Journal #29: For a while now I’ve bounced the idea around in my head that the future is as fixed as the past. When I say I think the future is fixed and unchangeable, I’m not referring to fateism, which is the theological belief that god is the arbiter of the future. My beliefs align more with the deterministic school of thought, the idea that the future is determined by preceding events in a never-ending butterfly effect. Following this school of thought, every decision we make is already determined by preceding events, which does make sense to me as the human brain at its core functions as a computer. The brain consciously and unconsciously computes information that it’s given and makes a decision. There is no randomness in how we process information, therefore all of our decisions are based purely on preceding events. These preceding events can vary from someone punching you in the gut to the tiniest movements of chemicals in the brain, and these events themselves are dictated by preceding events.
One of the reasons why this idea weighs so heavily on my mind is because it can’t be proven or disproven. The theory states that there’s only one decision you’ll take in any given circumstance due to cause and effect, but that’s impossible to prove or disprove, because in the end you will take a single decision, which could be the only possible decision you could’ve made, or it could’ve been one of millions. This theory also goes against chaos theory, which states that all natural systems are inherently unpredictable due to the amount of variables present in natural systems, but then again fractals, a commonly used example of chaos theory, are famous for following patterns. The main reason this theory weighs heavily on my mind is the idea that it invalidates the idea of self-determinism. After stewing over this for a long time, I came to the conclusion that determinism doesn’t invalidate self-determinism because we still make decisions ourselves, these decisions are just the only decisions we would ever have made due to cause and effect. By determinism, I was always destined to forget my keys in my dorm room when I went to tennis practice that one day, but it was also my fault for forgetting them like a dope as well.
The theory of determinism no longer brings me a feeling of dread, as I’ve reconciled my beliefs in regard to the theory. Determinism says that there’s only one outcome based on all preceding events, but it doesn’t mean free will doesn’t exist. Determinism doesn’t mean you have no control over your actions because they’re predetermined, it means that the action you take in a situation is the only action you would’ve taken. After reconciling my beliefs, I’ve come to believe that the future is dictated by determinism, and it’s just as unchangeable as the past.
Journal #30: I got some good constructive criticism for my TIB essay. I expected more of a negative reaction to be honest, everyone else in my group told about a moral they learned that made them a better person, and I wrote about a controversial school of thought that contradicts free will. I was given some very good feedback on how to make my essay better: I should explain how I came to explore this theory, I should delete the part about chaos theory (which I understand it was an unnecessary tangent), and I should split this essay into multiple paragraphs. Nobody in my group said it but I feel like I should also cut out a lot of the circular writing, where I just elaborated on what determinism is a bunch of times. I think I ended up doing that because it’s hard to explain, and even after explaining it like ten times throughout the essay I still don’t think I got it across as precisely as I wanted to.
Journal #31: Week 13 as a college student was kind of stressful but I made it through. I had a biology exam this week that covered so much material that I actually properly studied for this exam, which I haven’t done in a while since I got here. I know studying for an exam the day before is a bad habit, which I am trying to break currently, but there’s something about studying on a short notice that makes me memorize the material quicker. Maybe it’s the dread of knowing that if I don’t succeed in studying efficiently I’ll likely fail, and failure isn’t an option that I consider. Anyways, I know more than I ever wanted to do about plants, invertebrates, and fungi. At least invertebrates are cool, mollusks are awesome and rotifers are like microscopic vaccuums. Fungi are less cool, and because I struggled when studying the parts and types of fungi, I basically engrained the information into my brain. I usually forget all the material I studied for exams the day after, but it’s been almost a week and I still remember the thallum of a mushroom.
