Enjoy the Little Things

I watched Neil Pasricha’s* TED talk about the 3 As of awesome. It really made me appreciate the little things in life, like the cold side of a pillow or getting your glass refilled without asking. Neil shared some very personal stories that were from the good, the bad, and the plain ugly times in his life, and as he unveiled his soul to the world, I felt more comfortable with the talk. The biggest idea he presented was positivity. Focus on the encouraging things in life and you will get through the hard ones. Why don’t people do this? Why don’t they appreciate the good things, however small? I see people at school moaning on and on about homework, sleep, finals, whatever, and I think can’t you just be happy with what you have? Now I know I’m guilty of this too some days, and some days you just need to vent and get it off your chest, but when you hear about someone’s awful night over and over, it makes you depressed too. Positivity is like a yawn, its contagious. Once one person experiences it, everyone else wants it to. The same goes for negativity too, except for its more unconscious. How do we get out of this rut? Well we need to stop obsessing over the negative. Why do we dwell on negative things? I guess moping around about the insane amount of reading you have to do and getting pitied for it is more rewarding then moving on and being happy about something else. That being said, the way you face life and your attitude about it was the first A of awesome. We’ve all had those days when you start your day feeling crappy and then your day is crappy too. Waking up on the wrong side of the bed is not something we can change, but if we face the day with a smile, people will be happy around you too. A smile can change anything so quickly that its better to feel excellent about stuff then it is to frown about it. The next A was awareness. You need to be alert to all of the small actions that could change your life. As Neil puts it, you need to get back to your 3 year old mentality. Some people have a hard time with that, though, because they are so used to being serious that they can’t let go. What brings this seriousness in? I think its life. When you are 3 you don’t care about gas prices, the bills, or terrorists. All you want is that purple crayon so you can finish drawing your butterfly. As you get older, you realize that there is more to life than doodling and popsicles. You now have things to worry about, stresses that make you so serious that you’re unable to be truly happy. Sure, you can fake it for a while, but when will it become too much? You need to be able to see the word for the first time, to relive your childhood and feel new again. The last A is authenticity, and to me, the most important one. You need to be real with yourself and others. There’s no need to put on a façade because you don’t like something about your life. Why aren’t people comfortable with they way they are? I know I have all of the self-confidence in the world, and I see people that hate their thighs, hair, or legs, and I wonder why they can’t just accept it and move on with their lives? They spend so much time worrying about material things that there isn’t enough time to be happy an enjoy life. We are only here on Earth for 100 years, so why not live everyday to its fullest? Everyone gets bumps in their life, because life isn’t perfect, but you can make the best with what you have and get past it instead of wallowing in negativity. Life is amazing and there are so many things to be happy about, so leave the negative behind and start everyday with a smile.

*Check out Neil’s amazing website here, and let the little things make you happy :)

Pirates...and tutoring?

In Dave Eggers’ TED talk he talked about pirate supplies and education reform. You may be thinking, what an unlikely pair, but in an attempt to slip past zoning laws, Eggers and his team of writers came up with something amazing. Their idea was to offer one on one tutoring with students in areas that needed the most help. This tutoring was needed because the ratio of teachers to students was so drastically different that there wasn’t enough time to help each student individually, students didn’t have a motivator to get their homework done, and they were not achieving as well as they could have. The lack of teachers is interesting, though, because their salaries are decreasing, and more of them are being laid off. Shouldn’t there be more of a focus on teachers and educators then Wall Street businessmen? Teachers shape tomorrows leaders and will impact their students dramatically, but if their jobs are disappearing, who is going to teach our kids? They are the basis for our society and they make people they way they are, but with the economic crash and lack of jobs, we need more people like Eggers and the other writers that can help the next generation reach their full potential. Now, as I mentioned earlier, the building the tutors were using had to be used to sell something, so they opened up a pirate supply shop, with everything from planks to eye patches, they have your pirate needs covered. In the back of this store is the classroom, where students can draw from their surroundings as inspiration. Who wouldn’t want to write about pirates anyway? That is the next big difference from 826 Valencia and Arapahoe High. Here at school we are faced with the same white walls and odd linoleum floors everyday. Talk about boring. Eggers used design to capture the student’s imagination without meaning to. I know I would be more motivated to go to school if it was pirate themed! Who designed schools to be so boring and bland if I go to school to be excited about learning? Lets just say that plastic wood desks and a lack of natural light is not my cup of tea; I’d rather be fishing, and that’s saying something because I would imagine myself being really bad at it. Schools all across the country need a makeover so they can have their students achieve their bests. Motivation is a big topic in class. It seems like with every TED talk we hear, someone, somewhere, is lacking a drive. These students in California required a push in the right direction, and Eggers brought them that. They didn’t need to go to tutoring, so why did they? It was fun! That’s the answer, plain and simple. Eggers also started publishing his students’ work, which changed their writing considerably. Kids are motivated by an importance and a purpose in writing. I feel this way in class when I write an essay. What’s the point in this? While Eggers’ students have their work printed out and permanent. They way the classroom worked was also a big motivator. The students guided the learning, not the teachers, which put things into students’ perspective. They like what they were doing, so they did it. If this is the case, shouldn’t students design schools if we are going to spend a lot of time in them? 12 years of our lives are spent in school, so why shouldn’t we enjoy it? Dave Eggers’ TED called for a reform in education, and I agree with him completely.  

Mind Control with Keith Barry

Keith Barry’s TED talk twisted my arms, my mind, and tested the amount of tension I could stand! The only question that was floating through my head was, “How does he do it????” and, “THERE’S NO WAY!” but because I couldn’t answer them, I ignored them and went deeper into the brain magic. The first brain trick he did was asking people to cross their arms and somehow untangle them like his. Now I did mine EXACTLY like his, but I could not unravel my hands, even after I did the trick for 5 minutes. This confused me so much that I can’t even understand how that happened! I think that part of the “magic” in the trick was that the mind was too focused on following his arms exactly, that it didn’t pick up on whatever change he did, if any*. This made my brain hurt, the same way that it does when I spend countless hours on homework, or writing the same paper. So, when schools and teachers assign big projects that require undivided attention, does the brain miss more of the little details because it is so focused on doing well? I've noticed that when I read over an assignment that took me a while, there are stupid mistakes in it. Another case of this is that the brain could be thinking too fast and trying too hard to keep up with whatever is going on, that it misses the essential things, however minute they may be. The next act was that he drove a car with a blindfold, supposedly seeing through the woman in the front seats eyes. This one struck me as obvious, that is, if I’m right, that he had simply driven the road before and memorized the way the road went. Also it was fairly straight. This experiment just shows how willing some people are to believe whatever is put in front of them. Human’s brains are so easily influenced that they will go with what they are presented with. Why have people stopped questioning things? In class, anything a teacher says is automatically taken down as correct, even if it might not be. In my classes it seems that no one ever asks “why?” or “how?” when those are the ways we should be learning, and not just by taking notes and having answers given to us. Schools are not challenging students enough, and even if they were, there is no incentive to achieve highly. Going back to intrinsic motivators, the carrot and the stick just aren’t effective ways of getting people to do things well. Schools need to come up with a new system that will help their students accomplish more. Next, Keith called up two audience members and messed with their minds. When he poked one person, the other one would feel the same thing. I think this is plain fake. Even though he swore he never knew these people, he must have told them when to raise their arms or where they would get special sensations. However, if this voo doo hypnosis thing is true, I would be extremely interested in finding out how it works. The ability to control someone’s mind with your own is amazing and could be used for either good…. or evil! The last brain magic act he did was place a metal spike under cups and ask a man to risk his hands by pressing on the cups so that they would collapse and impale him if the spike was there. This made me cringe and close my eyes. I did not want to see that poor guy lose a hand. But luckily, somehow, he survived, intact. This kind of stress and tension on the human body is odd. My reaction was to cover my eyes and squeal, involuntarily of course. But of course, because I have a low tolerance to pain and gory things my reaction would be much more dramatic then that of a horror film producer. One of the most basic things about brains is that they adapt to the environment they are out in, and if they are not used to a situation, they will react in the most rudimentary way. For me, I have not been desensitized to things like this, so I freaked out. Obviously, the brain is a very powerful thing, and it takes an extraordinary person, like Keith Barry, to harness that.

*I asked my dad to come in and do it, and he saw that Keith switched his hand position when the camera wasn’t facing him. Tricky, tricky man!!

Acceptance, Beauty, and Prosthetics

I watched Aimee Mullins talk about her 12 pairs of legs, and the definition of beauty. Aimee had to have both of her legs amputated at the knee at age one because of a medical condition, and even though she is missing her legs, she is an actress, an athlete, a model, and an inspiration to people everywhere. She started off her talk with an experience with elementary schoolers and their reaction to her legs. Instead of being weirded out, they were curious and started to think of all different kinds of legs that they could make for her. The kids reacted this way because the teachers had not told them not to. Aimee sees the way education and the school systems train and censor kids to life because they need to pop out these perfect cookie cutter citizens. The awful thing about this is that kids are new to this world, so they are open to anything and willing to try it all, and schools take this away from them by showing them that there is only one specific way to do something. For example, I've been told not to stare at people that are disabled and I don’t because that’s how I was raised, but little children don’t know that, so they walk up and ask questions (that to some adults may seem rude).  This act of approaching a stranger that is different is not acceptable to some people. But who decides what is acceptable? Does society push these ideals onto kids at such a young age that they don’t know any different? I think that every kid is exposed to these norms in school and by the time they are done with school, that is the way they will act for the rest of their lives. Kids are so easily influenced by how people act around them, and when a certain level of acceptance is shown, that is how they’ll act too. Aimee, as a model, also brings up the question, what is beauty? What is this perfection that so many women strive for and who told them that is what they’re supposed to look like? Beauty and acceptance from people around you is one of the highest things people want to achieve, because at a young age through the media and people around them, kids learn that being flawless is the ultimate goal. Aimee stretches this ideal by bringing in new design and beauty into her prosthetic legs, so much that people don’t even realize that they are false. She has gotten several legs from designers all over the world, and the most important part is that they are able to merge beauty, technology, and practicality into one package. From her talk I feel inspired to show people that beauty cannot be, and is not, defined by anyone. You are your own person, and if you feel good and confident in yourself, nothing else should matter.

The Spread of Information Through the Internet

Clay Shirky’s TED talk really made me think about what kind of impact the Internet has on the world, whether it is positive or negative. Because I spend countless hours a week on my beautiful Mac, I can attest that being on the Internet has changed me, for better or for worse, I can’t tell yet. Obviously there are two realms: one of websites and software that will help the world become a better place, and then there are those that will not accomplish that. Clay’s example of a beneficial website was Ushahidi, a website that collects eyewitness reports of violence sent in by email and text-message and places them on a Google map. Basically, with this advancement in technology, everyone can be a reporter and improve the information that is put out into the world. Websites like Ushahidi will improve the varied viewpoints and remove the filter of information to the people that actually need it. I think something like this could be Wikipedia. A well-known information highway that anyone can participate in and help spread their knowledge around the world. People have so much free time and free knowledge that they are able to collaborate through the Internet like they never have been able to before. Clay calls this cognitive surplus, and as he puts it, the ability of the world to work together on projects. All of the abundance of experience and the time to do something with that, makes me wonder why people are not using up that time to do something? Instead of going out and changing something about the world, people would rather stay inside and play Black Ops, something that, in the end, will have no effect on anyone whatsoever. A big part of this frustration is that I am also realizing that I show these signs of laziness and indifference to my world. I will admit that I do get my daily fill of the Tosh.0 Blog and watch an episode of Survivor once a week, but I am not compensating with volunteering or being an active member in my community. I wonder what will happen if all of this cognitive surplus “runs out” because my generation has chosen to spend their days indoors in front of the latest piece of technology playing Angry Birds and not outside using that tool to find people jobs or help the homeless. Now, I’m not saying that 15 minutes of Fruit Ninja will end the world, but there are so many things that you could be doing in place of that that would actually accomplish something that isn’t a worldwide high score. Talking about all of this advancement in technology makes me speculate if Americans are so lazy that we have developed a reliance on automation, or if we are so smart that we could come up with things like this? I think it is a blend of both. With the newest Apple “i product” comes a better understanding of technology, but also apps that will evoke the laziness in all of us. With things like LOLcats and other memes floating around the Internet, it’s easy to wonder where all of the purpose went. Back to the intrinsic motivators that Dan Pink talks about, purpose is one of the essential things. You need to know that what you are doing will impact the world positively, but some people do not have this motivator. Like we talked about, kids in school lack this motivator because solving for x has no purpose. With students spending 6 hours a day at school surrounded with the Internet and technology, its no wonder people are asking how the next generation is being raised. I mean think about it, the president in 2050 will have been brought up in a society where computer reign supreme and LOLcats are the norm. You have to wonder if all of the good things the Internet has to offer are worth exposing people to all of the bad things. Society needs to start asking themselves how does what you’re doing change the world and is there a purpose in what you are doing? With Internet will come helpful things that can change the world and things that will basically accomplish nothing. The question is, how do you distribute info and impact the world with it?

The New Age of Motivation

When Dan Pink finished his TED talk on motivation, I felt like I wanted to go out and do something; but then I realized that I had homework, so I stayed inside instead. Mr. Pink opens up his talk with a story about his law school experience, which, because it is humorous, lightens the mood and helps people see where his perspective is coming from. Immediately, you can see the passion he has for what he is doing, and that he wants to spread the word of how businesses are working incorrectly. He starts off by introducing the candle problem, which in short is where a person is put in a room with a candle, a box of tacks, matches, and told to attach the candle to the wall. Most would take the route of attempting to tack or “wax” up the candle, but it soon becomes apparent that they need to see other the ways things can work, ways that are not their intended purpose, and attach the candle by tacking the box up to the wall. The reason this connection takes so long is because the world is stuck in “functional fixedness”, or the thought and mind-set that everything only has one purpose. This same experiment was used to test the effectiveness of reward. One group was told they were being timed to establish an average completion time, the other group was offered a cash reward based on how long it took them. The results were astonishing, and showed just how flawed our system of reward and punishments are. The group with a payment took 3.5 minutes longer than the group without the incentive. This system of “carrots and sticks” is how companies operate, and an experiment just proved that way of business wrong? That’s not how it’s supposed to be! When corporations offer bonuses, they are actually preventing quick work to be done? This method doesn’t match up with science, but it is still used in 21^st century operations, which makes Mr. Pink crazy! However, when the tacks were separated from the box, the group with the incentive “kicked the other group’s butt”.  This is because an incentive narrows the view and concentrates the mind on remedial tasks, and the answer to the problem becomes much more apparent, because it is literally sitting right there! Since businesses are erring in this way, schools must be too, because they created the people that are running the companies. The school system is run by an “if-then” approach. If you get this answer right, then I will give you a good grade. This is the same motivation that has been proved unproductive over and over again! A reward set up this way tapers the student’s creativity and forces them to focus on the bare minimum and the obvious answers. Basically, schools are raising left brained thinkers whose jobs can be automated and outsourced easily and cheaply. What kind of job market are they setting us up for? To further drive this point home, several MIT students were asked to take a series of tasks that tested motor skills, creativity, and concentration, and then were offered 3 levels of reward. As long as the task required a motor skill the rewards worked; the higher the pay, the better the performance. Not surprisingly, however, when the tasks were cognitive, there was a poorer end result. Clearly the school system is making people think a certain way that is not effective in this society. So how does one fix this system? Dan Pink says that it’ll take 3 things: autonomy, or the urge to direct your own life, mastery, the desire to get better at something that matters, and purpose, a yearning to do what we do with something larger than ourselves. In studies, companies that gave their employees free time to do whatever they wanted to do received more creative and ingenious ideas, because all of a sudden its not work any more, its fun. Mr. Pinks example of how an unscheduled company prevails is Microsoft’s encyclopedia, a project with paid professionals that had to stick to a deadline, versus Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that is done for fun, with no one getting paid to do the work. Microsoft had to shut down their project but Wikipedia is still thriving. The difference between these two companies is extreme. Wikipedia works because high performance is achieved with a desire to do things because they matter or are interesting. The people working on Wikipedia do not require any kind of compensation, they do it because they enjoy it, and that is where companies are going wrong. If this mismatch between science and business is fixed, then maybe we can change the world.

The Breakdown of Math Classes

  I watched Dan Meyer, a high school math teacher; talk about when he realized that the math classes in high school are not teaching kids to actually use math, but just spoon-feeding the kids answers, and what he decided to do about it. What he was saying was true and fit in with how I feel about school. He used the analogy that, “As a math teacher he sells a product to a market that doesn’t want it but is forced by law to buy it.” This is essentially the way that I feel about math and math class. I don’t want to go to or need this class but I have to go through with it because I am required to. The most surprising part of this talk was how my own feelings about math were exactly the ones that he presented to the audience, “Students have a lack of initiative, perseverance, and retention.” He goes to work everyday knowing that right after he explains something, someone will have that exact question, because as students, we don’t care enough to actually listen. He also brings up that students have an “aversion to word problems”, which is surprising to me, because I find these the easiest, and the have an “eagerness for formula”. How could we not, though, when we are raised in a society where a TV show has 3 commercial breaks, a laugh track, and then the problem that the characters face is solved? Students want math to be immediate and have a satisfying closure, even though most times it won't be. Another thing he brings up that I absolutely agree with is how bad the textbooks that the math teachers use are. I’m sure that you agree that when you are flipping through the book and you see a problem like “how long will a barrel with these measurements take to fill up?” you think, “When will I ever use this?” There is the beauty of what Mr. Meyer is bringing to the math classroom. He will make the student ask the questions to find the answers. In the case of the barrel with water, he will film a video of a container being filled up excruciatingly slowly and then when he shows it to the class, it will evoke a “how long will it take to fill this up??” That is the student catching the bait that he has set, because then they will calculate the problem and watch the video to the end so the students can see how long it actually took. This way the answer is what will actually happen, not just some theoretical answer placed in the back of the book, well within the student’s reach. The best part of this video is how familiar everyone is with this topic, like Mr. Meyer said, whether you liked it or not, you went through with math class. It seemed to me like because he is a teacher; he was easy to listen to and was (obviously) very knowledgeable and passionate about what he was talking about. The thing with the way math is taught is that it is not kept in a student’s mind. I’m sure that over summer break I lost over half of the things I had learned in 8th grade. The way that this knowledge is so easily forgotten is a sign that something is wrong with the way that it is taught. Sure, students may remember how to apply Pythagorean’s theorem up to the next unit test, but past then is what really matters, how well it is remembered for use when it is actually applicable, if it ever is. In relation to A Whole New Mind, Mr. Meyer is proving that even though the system is pushing out Left-Brainers, and not Right-Brainers, in some cases, the school isn’t even teaching math, a logical, left directed thing, properly. It is frightening to me, as a student, to see how ineffective the school is at teaching things that they should be good at, I mean, if I’m not actually going to remember what MX+B is equal to, and how to use it, then why am I here? As students get older they realize that they cannot use the things they learning in the real world, therefore they are rendered useless in their minds. We, as a part of the school system, need to insist on a better math curriculum to help people recognize that math is applicable and relevant in the world.