Metacognition: QE Essay

I'm often very jealous of the way that others minds work. While reading something someone wrote, or looking at doodles on the sides of their homework, I wish my mind could be as creative as theirs. When I am assigned to write a paper, i often get stuck very quickly and lose all my creativity.


For my QE essay, I decided to write about the relationship between emotion and creativty. For me, the hardest part of every essay is starting it. I sat myself down and thought.  Why did I chose this one instead of the others? What did I know about this topic? How do I relate to this?


I started of the essay talking about how emotion plays into MY creativity or how creativity plays into MY emotions. Often, papers are easier for me when I can write about myself. It was going pretty well and I finished one paragraph. I re-read it that I wasnt interesting to start off a paper with "When I do this..." I decided to put a paragraph before this one. The problem was, what should this be about? Once again, I chose something that would be easy for me to write about. Music.


Music related to this topic very well. I listed some characteristics of music and musical terms and then talked about the emotions it gives me.


Somethings that suprise me about my thinking is that when I'm forced to focus on something like right a paper, my mind freaks out. I think when it freaks out, it automatically shifts into divergent thinking. For example, I'm one of those kids who is given a topic for a paper, starts on the topic, then by the end is talking about something totally different. I have to make sure I do multiple drafts of something like that.


I do like that my mind can be divergent though. When I take the time to calm down, work on what i need to, check it twice, although it may be a mess at first, I can change it up but it will still be creative.


To accomplish that, I need to work on calming down and STARTING. If i can figure out more creative ways than to start than i usually do, I think my work will turn out a lot better. I just need to try out different strategies.

Best of Week: How Do You Know If You Know Something?

There have been many times where its the night before a test, I'm looking at a review sheet, and I look though every term and say, "I know that, I know this. Okay, thats easy. I rememeber that" but the next day when I take the test I don't know any of the answers. The problem I have is know the difference between recognizing the term and knowing what it actually means.The lesson in class "How Do You Know If You Know Something?" has helped me a lot.

It's funny to think that after 11 years in school, before this lesson, I wasn't quite sure what I ment to know something. I knew what it ment to belive something is right but that's not what we were talking about.

We established that to prove you know something you must figure out the big insites or claims of the idea. It is also important to use appropriate vocabulary that applies. We finally decided that the definition of knowing something is having the ability to say it in your own words comfortably.

This is definitly going to help me in the future because when studying, if i can't explain the term myself, I'll know that I DON'T know it. It wont just help me for studying either. If I'm not sure i understand what someone said, or a random idea that I'm more interested in taking the time to learn, I can try exlplain it in my own words. If I'm not sure that i understand, I can always try to explain to someone what I think it is in moy own words. If I'm misunderstood, they can explain it to me in their own words!

Connection: The Creative Personality and Paradox

In my mind, creativity  links with colorful so when I think of people who are creative, I usually picture people who doodle cool things on their homework, or are amazing artists. Unfortunately, I forget to give credit to those who are comedians, musicians, directors, writers or scientist like the ones Csikentmihalyi talks about. In "The Creative Personality" by Mihaly Csikentmihalyi, he focuses on how creative people have complex and paradoxical personalities.

When I remember to expand my definition of creative, I remember my friends. I pride myself in having very creative friends. Whether they are incredibely smart, artists, musicians, or just plain funny. Based on Csikentmihalyi's aricle, my friends should have paradoxial personailities, and they do.

When my mind hears the word paradox, it automatically thinks of the show Paradox at our school. Although I have never been a member of the club or been in the show, I saw it my sophmore year and I participated in stage crew for it last year. I think the people who i know who were in the show are very creative. They create the comical skits and preform them. Outside of their preformance, they are some of the wittiest, funniest people I have ever met and I envy all of them because of that. I appreciate the fact that these people are able to have fun and I can enjoy my day more because of them.

Change Of Mind: Vertical Listening

The idea of veritcal listening was only something I thought about when it came to music. I really enjoyed listening to "Maple Leaf Rag" preformed by Marcus Roberts and listening to the right hand (the melody) and the left hand (the harmony, rhythm, and counter melodies).

This past summer I worked on, and still continue to work on, my ability to focus on the "left hand" of songs and learning them. Something I had never thought of before was taking this idea and applying it to people. For me, this is something I would really like  to work on.

Applying the idea of vertical listening to people seems very difficult. With music, one can just listen to the different notes being played or sung. Often, with people, you have to build a relationship before you have the privilage to hear those other notes.

I am having trouble figuring out ways, or strategies, if you will, to go about verically listening. I hope to discover more ways than just one because the results might not always be the same. The sole stategy I have come up with so far is to listen to what someone says, think about why they said what they did, what they were thinking when they said it, what their veiw point is on the situation, and ask them questions about it to finally create a more meaningful relationship with that person. Of course, it will take sometime to build a meaningful relationship but by doing this i will be able to see the different layers of people. To me, that is an amazing privilage and I hope i get to that point with many of my friends.