Laura's Log

F***ing not Living

laurat15 — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 17:43:54 +0000

As we grow up we learn the F word. Fear. When you are a little kid you are afraid of the monster lurching under your bed and the bearded uncle who scratches your face when he insists on kissing. But as you grow older and change, your fears change with you. As an adult one of your fears may be the fear of failure.

Fear is a strange thing. When you look back on it you often can’t understand why you allowed it to control you and cause you to behave the way you did. This past summer I had a real problem with my fear of failure. I had played tennis all year and I arrived at team tryouts confident and ready to win my matches. I stepped onto the court and the first time I missed a shot my muscles tensed and my breathing quickened. I tried checking in with my feelings but the voice inside my head kept shreiking “just get the ball over the net!” I was so afraid of losing that my strokes became stilted. I tried taking some deep breathes, but every time I hit a bad shot my fear intensified. I won some of my matches even though I wasn’t playing my best. I lost others. My parents and friends couldn’t understand why I was playing so badly because just a few short days before they had seen how well I was playing. My fear of losing caused me to play less than my best tennis.

I was reading Vinny’s blog and he said, “Nobody wants to fail ever. All we want is success and everything to go our way.” I agree that people want to succeed and that is why fear of failure can be so powerful. Some people allow their fear of failure to stop them from chasing their dreams. The fear in the back of their minds may tell them “I’m not smart enough” or “I’m not talented enough” so why even try if I’ll fail. If you live your life listening to what your fear tells you, then are you really living?

To live a life without fear of failure we have to learn and accept that failure is part of life. Everyone fails at some point but must get up and try again using what they learned from their first attempt to make their second more successful. Our lives and our futures are shaped by our experiences and by what we learn from them. If we allow our fears to stop us from trying new things and from learning, then we are not really living.

Has anyone else struggled with fear of failure like I did? I am really interested in why fear is such a big part of our lives. I would love some feed back.

“Would you jump off a bridge if your friend did?”

laurat15 — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:51:28 +0000

Friends. You love to spend time with them and talk to them but, how do they affect the way that you learn? Like everything around you, your friends can influence who you are and what you believe in. Friends talk with each other and share opinions about things, but does this hinder their ability to form their own opinions on things? I was reading Vinny’s blog and he made the point that people who don’t already have an “opinion allow the other[s] who do have an opinion to affect the way they think.” This made me think about the influence that your friends have on you and on what you learn. At some point, everyone has probably felt the pressure to go along with what other people around them are saying or doing. I know that my friends and I seem to be a lot alike and we generally believe in the same things. Is this because we honestly believe them or is it because we feel like we have to agree with what our peers believe? If the answer is the second, then we are not learning from our peers we are just accepting what they say as the truth. I have a friend who made some bad choices in the beginning of her freshman year and now she is known as being “easy” or a “slut.” I watched her self destruct and now I can see how much she regrets the decisions she made. Hearing her pain helped me learn to not make the same mistakes. Friends are a vital resource to learning if we honestly listen to their experiences and feelings and try to draw conclusions from them. By talking with your friends, you can learn about things that you may have never thought about on your own.”

Because My Mommy Said So

laurat15 — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:14:44 +0000

Recently I was thinking about how much influence my parents have on what I believe. We generally share the same social, political, and religious views because that is what they taught me. I’ve realized that I dismiss beliefs that aren’t my own as being wrong, before really thinking about them. Even though I don’t have to accept another beliefs immediately, I have realized the importance of listening to them so I can strengthen my own beliefs. I have no desire to throw away what my parents taught me so I can say I formed my own opinions on things but I do want to be able to say that I heard the other sides of the arguments and was able to decide what to believe. Today I was in the car with my friend and her dad and we passed a group of people along the road who were speaking out against abortions. A conversation about abortion started and I knew I was against it but I realized that I wasn’t able to explain why because I had just accepted what my parents taught me. It made me realize that I should be able to explain why I support or am against something instead of having to say “because my mommy said so.”

the media and the “truth”

laurat15 — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 23:25:27 +0000

Lately I have been thinking about what influences teenagers. Parents and friends play a big role but I believe that the media is a big part as well. Everyday the media tells us what to wear, how to act, and what to believe. The media often pushes you to believe certain things like “I’m not pretty enough” or “I need to act like that for guys to like me.” They create a world that draws you in and holds on to you. A voice is in your head telling you to believe it but why should you? You may doubt yourself, but why? Why do you have to accept what they tell you as true? I think that as we watch our shows like Gossip Girl we have to remember that its not real. You have to be able to take what you watch and think about it but not accept it as true. By thinking about things and making your own opinions you can learn about the world around you instead of accepting things as the truth because someone told you to.

How You Learn

laurat15 — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:32:35 +0000

Today in class we looked at how people learn. I took a quiz to help me figure out how I learn because I was not very sure. I know I learn by writing things down but I also learn from hearing things. It turns out that I learn best verbally, socially, logically, and solitarily. How can I be a social learner and at the same time lean when I’m by myself is interesting. We talked about how some people pictures when they think of things and others just see words. I thought this was really interesting and look forward to studying learning more.

How man learns about Grendel

laurat15 — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 23:43:20 +0000

People learn and form opinions about others through the way they look, speak, and act. People decided that Grendel was an evil monster when he attacked their homes and killed their families. They may have never met Grendel or had a conversation with him but they knew that he was evil from the way he acted. People may have also decided he was an evil monster by his appearance. They saw what he looked like, which was not like them, and decided that anything that strange looking must be bad. Grendel seems to frequently scream and moan when he is around other humans. This could lead the people to believe that he was a possessed, demonic creature. Grendrel was believed by the people to be a monster because he acted, looked, and sounded like one in their presence.

Creating the Blog

laurat15 — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 15:34:37 +0000

I’m sitting in my English class struggling to control the mouse on my 7in. laptop. We created our blogs today and I have to say I’m feeling a little bit apprehensive. To be honest I know nothing about computers. I know how to open a word document and google things but when it comes to doing anything above the level of a second grader, I’m hopeless. So far I’ve asked my friend Kelcie about twenty questions ranging from “what’s a blog?” to “how do I post something?” I’m going to use this blog to expand my horizons and try new things. Wish me luck!