Monday, December 7, 2009
exhaustion
i try, but i don't really understand how studying works. and i don't mean how learning works, i mean how the students here in mcgill go about studying. i mean, finals are starting, the libraries are cramped, it's impossible to find a seat in mclennan, and you can almost read the stress and frustration when you look at people's faces. but how does it work? do they study every waking hour taking small breaks for lunch/dinner? do they study until they can't keep their eyes open anymore? do they resort to other ways to keep themselves awake? i'm not including myself in all this because although i am one of them, sitting here in the library since 8:00am, i don't feel like i'm even close to having their level of determination, their knowledge, and their drive. and why? well, because i have given up. why? because 2 years have made me realize that no matter how many hours i put into it i will never get the results that i want, the results that i think i deserve. yes i'm a bad test-taker, yes i get nervous, and yes i believe exams are not representative of knowledge. But it is the way it's done and who am i to question it, right? no. i do question it because i am one of the many who are being submitted to this flawed (in my opinion) system. and what do i really get out of it at the end? a diploma from McGill University.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
FINAL REPORT
I never would have imagined that I would live an experience such as the one I have lived this semester. I’m honestly not trying to suck up or overly exaggerate but I’m surprisingly shocked at what I have learned about myself this term, and the fact that it is actually due to McGill. What I mean by this is not that McGill is the source of all evil and a horror in disguise, but rather the fact that in a way I have always felt the bureaucracy that surrounds me, the university’s need to excel, and the weight that McGill attributes to producing excellent students rather than excellent people. This might sound naive simply because it is well known that college does not determine who we become in life but rather gives us the tools to choose our own path. However I believe, and it might be completely due to where I come from and the values I was raised with, that the schools we attend and the people we meet along the way do in fact have a big impact on who we become in life, on the decisions we make, on the path we choose to follow, but most importantly of all, who we will be at the end of the road and whether we will have lived a life we can be proud of, or one that we will regret. Where I am trying to get, and what I am trying to point out with this is that before September, the impression I had gotten from McGill was that it would make me the best student I could possibly be, and it would open a lot of doors for me. However I never considered the possibility that McGill would have an impact (big or small) regarding my personal growth, my beliefs and my values. In spite of this, today, December 2, 2009, I can honestly and happily say I have been proven wrong. It is a funny feeling being happy about being wrong, I guess most people go through life and never experience it, but I’m glad I did.
Getting back on track, I just want to say that after a surprising and a beyond doubt revealing semester, I can say with certainty and honesty that I am truly a different person after having taken this class. And it’s not a change that can be seen immediately, it’s probably not even a change that can be seen at all, but it’s a change that I can feel, it’s a change of perspective, a broadening of knowledge, a change of self, of thought, of views and of values. It may sound somewhat ridiculous, and it might not even sound realistic, but to me this sums up pretty well what I lived this semester. The reason why I’m guessing this paper reads like silly teenager sharing her love for twilight, is because I just really need to make clear, point out, and explain well why I’m so grateful for what this class has done for me. I have always been a person (and I shared some of this in my entries) that goes through life without many expectations. Personal experience has taught me that building hopes as well as trusting people are sure ways of getting hurt. Why? Firstly because if you don’t have hope then you can’t feel disappointment, but most importantly because in my experience people always leave; in my case my father, grandfather, and siblings. My skepticism and pessimism rule the way I have thought for years, to the point where I no longer know or even notice my constant negative thoughts, sarcasm, and doubts. However, this class, the reflection exercises and the journal entries, have taught me to think about how I think, to think about why I think the way I do, to think about the experiences that have shaped the way that I am and the person I have become, to think about the reasons behind my actions, and to question whether a change needs to be made.
So what can I say struck me the most about this experience? This is a tough question to answer considering the fact that to me, everything is interrelated in a sense because my discoveries regarding this assignment are all due to the thorough analysis of my actions. Well, first of all and in complete honesty, my daily journal entries and the constant delving into my own self, was tiring some of the time when I really did not feel like sitting down and thinking about the things that I’m doing wrong in my life in, the changes I should probably make (which is basically what every entry boiled down to – changes I wanted/want to make). Something, maybe irrelevant, that just hit me is the name of my blog: “write&discover”. This is the name that I gave it the very same day it was created and to tell you the truth I have no idea why I chose that name more than a month ago. Now I look back at it and I find it perfect, but back then I had absolutely no clue how this blog was going to impact my life. So maybe, and I cannot believe I’m saying (or writing) this, but just maybe I named it “write&discover” because I had hope..? Hope that I would be able to discover useful things about myself, hope that throughout this month I would actually get the tools for becoming a better person, the person I want to be. Or maybe it wasn’t hope at all, but rather a name that came up with due to a sudden, rare, surge of inspiration (my skepticism talking).
Still I realize I have not said what struck me the most, and maybe that’s because I don’t know which experience was the biggest, most important, most relevant one. So many I can think of, the times where I surprised myself (quitting smoking), the times where I failed (smoked – started all over again), and the time when I realized just how low my self-esteem really is (constantly applying make-up, inability to speak up in class..). All these experiences, some good some bad, struck me in different ways at one point or another and therefore I regard them all as equally important and equally impressionable.
I would like to add some things that have struck me, not during the experience, but rather after the experience, meaning during the time between my last journal entry (November 22nd) and today (December 2nd). One of the things I noticed needs a preview in order for you to understand it, so here it is: one of the many things I wrote about in my entries is how I watch around 15 TV shows weekly (give or take a few), how I rarely miss episodes, and how “apparently, I'd rather spend my time watching how fictional people live their fictional lives instead of thinking about how I live my, real, life.” (quoting myself – blog entry #7). So, what did I do without even noticing? Without paying attention, and definitely not on purpose? I stopped watching all these TV shows, and it might sound as irrelevant, and unimportant, but to me this is a big step. A person who used to follow so many TV shows, a person who focused on the lives of others in order to avoid her own, suddenly stops doing this without the intent or the purpose, is a big deal on my book. This means that I have had more time in my hands, and what have I done with this time you may ask. Well, the second thing that struck me as quite surprising is the fact that I bought a book and actually found the time to start reading it less than a week ago. What I am trying to say is not that I don’t enjoy reading, but rather the opposite: I love reading. However, ever since I got here 2 ½ years ago I am pretty sure the only books I have read are the ones I buy in airports to read on the plane every time I go back and forth from here to Dominican and vice versa. The third (quite surprising for me), and last thing that I realized after finishing my entries is that I actually missed writing. I have constantly found myself thinking about what I would write that day, the thing that I noticed, an experiment I wanted to try, or simply something I wanted to change. And so, when I found myself consistently disappointed about the fact that my assignment was over I thought: who says it has to be over? The class may have ended but my life hasn’t, my opportunities for learning haven’t ended, the thrill I get when I achieve something I never thought I could doesn’t have to end, so in conclusion: my entries don’t have to end. And they won’t. I will continue to write. I will write about anything that comes to mind, so the blog will probably take a different direction, but the point is I will be letting everything out. I won’t be holding things in, which means that I won’t continue to sink in a whole of self-pity, resentment, and unhappiness, but rather I will find a way to get through my problems and through my frustrations through my writing which is what I truly love. So thank you, again, for yet another reason: thank you for helping me reconnect with my true passion: writing. And thank you for making me understand the one thing that I desperately needed in order to reconnect with the world rather than to simply go through it but not living: all hope is not lost, people can change, I can change, good things do happen, and life should be lived to its full extent.
There are two more things I would like to talk about: a regret, and a realization, respectively. The former I want to talk about not only because it is cause for improvement within myself, but also because for some reason I feel the need to explain myself. Explaining myself better, the one regret that I have throughout the duration of this course is how I robbed myself from the opportunity to leave a mark on anyone, I robbed myself of the opportunity to have and express my opinions, but most importantly I robbed myself from the opportunity to connect with others. What I mean by all this is that one of the reasons why I loved this course is because within the classroom, during our discussions and dialogues, when I heard my classmates expressing their honest opinions I felt some sort of bond form and even though I don’t know most of them and never will, a sense of understanding was created and will forever exist because I feel like once you know how a person thinks, then you practically know everything about them. And I truly regret not being able to express any of my own opinions, and therefore ruling out the possibility of someone else feeling this kind of connection with me and something I said or thought. I honestly feel like I was invisible within the classroom, which I know is my own fault because I could never bring myself to raise my hand and share my thoughts. I also know that this assignment is not about beating yourself up, but without a doubt I would have done things differently if I had had a second chance. Moreover, I would have liked to create some sort of an impression on you, Rennie, so that at least you could have a face for the name while you read this paper, or maybe remembered something I had said in class and connected the person to the writing. But this won’t happen because by making myself invisible, you and probably the rest of the class have no idea who I am.
The last thing I would like to share is my realization. As I was reading over my entries before writing this paper, I came across this passage that I wrote: “what am I doing here? Do I deserve to be here? Am I wasting my time, and my family's money? Would I be better off back home? Am I a failure? And then the million dollar question, what do I do? What do I do to make it better? What do I do to succeed? How do I not fail? Am I not working enough? Am I taking all this for granted? The questions are endless, and sadly the answers couldn't be scarcer”(entry #12). What I realized was that at this point in my life my questions outweigh my answers, by far. And what this means is that I actually have no idea what I am doing with my life, or where my life is heading. I do not even know where I would want my life to go simply because I have no idea of where I stand and what my future holds. What I do know is my present, what I do know is that the choices that I make today will impact my future choices, my future life, and well basically: my future. So if there is one thing I have learned from this project, from this class, from this prof., and from myself, is that dwelling on the past is worthless – what’s done is done, worrying too much about the future is useless because you never know what the future holds, but focusing on the present is the only way you will achieve your goals, the only way you will be able to say that you lived to a full extent.
Getting back on track, I just want to say that after a surprising and a beyond doubt revealing semester, I can say with certainty and honesty that I am truly a different person after having taken this class. And it’s not a change that can be seen immediately, it’s probably not even a change that can be seen at all, but it’s a change that I can feel, it’s a change of perspective, a broadening of knowledge, a change of self, of thought, of views and of values. It may sound somewhat ridiculous, and it might not even sound realistic, but to me this sums up pretty well what I lived this semester. The reason why I’m guessing this paper reads like silly teenager sharing her love for twilight, is because I just really need to make clear, point out, and explain well why I’m so grateful for what this class has done for me. I have always been a person (and I shared some of this in my entries) that goes through life without many expectations. Personal experience has taught me that building hopes as well as trusting people are sure ways of getting hurt. Why? Firstly because if you don’t have hope then you can’t feel disappointment, but most importantly because in my experience people always leave; in my case my father, grandfather, and siblings. My skepticism and pessimism rule the way I have thought for years, to the point where I no longer know or even notice my constant negative thoughts, sarcasm, and doubts. However, this class, the reflection exercises and the journal entries, have taught me to think about how I think, to think about why I think the way I do, to think about the experiences that have shaped the way that I am and the person I have become, to think about the reasons behind my actions, and to question whether a change needs to be made.
So what can I say struck me the most about this experience? This is a tough question to answer considering the fact that to me, everything is interrelated in a sense because my discoveries regarding this assignment are all due to the thorough analysis of my actions. Well, first of all and in complete honesty, my daily journal entries and the constant delving into my own self, was tiring some of the time when I really did not feel like sitting down and thinking about the things that I’m doing wrong in my life in, the changes I should probably make (which is basically what every entry boiled down to – changes I wanted/want to make). Something, maybe irrelevant, that just hit me is the name of my blog: “write&discover”. This is the name that I gave it the very same day it was created and to tell you the truth I have no idea why I chose that name more than a month ago. Now I look back at it and I find it perfect, but back then I had absolutely no clue how this blog was going to impact my life. So maybe, and I cannot believe I’m saying (or writing) this, but just maybe I named it “write&discover” because I had hope..? Hope that I would be able to discover useful things about myself, hope that throughout this month I would actually get the tools for becoming a better person, the person I want to be. Or maybe it wasn’t hope at all, but rather a name that came up with due to a sudden, rare, surge of inspiration (my skepticism talking).
Still I realize I have not said what struck me the most, and maybe that’s because I don’t know which experience was the biggest, most important, most relevant one. So many I can think of, the times where I surprised myself (quitting smoking), the times where I failed (smoked – started all over again), and the time when I realized just how low my self-esteem really is (constantly applying make-up, inability to speak up in class..). All these experiences, some good some bad, struck me in different ways at one point or another and therefore I regard them all as equally important and equally impressionable.
I would like to add some things that have struck me, not during the experience, but rather after the experience, meaning during the time between my last journal entry (November 22nd) and today (December 2nd). One of the things I noticed needs a preview in order for you to understand it, so here it is: one of the many things I wrote about in my entries is how I watch around 15 TV shows weekly (give or take a few), how I rarely miss episodes, and how “apparently, I'd rather spend my time watching how fictional people live their fictional lives instead of thinking about how I live my, real, life.” (quoting myself – blog entry #7). So, what did I do without even noticing? Without paying attention, and definitely not on purpose? I stopped watching all these TV shows, and it might sound as irrelevant, and unimportant, but to me this is a big step. A person who used to follow so many TV shows, a person who focused on the lives of others in order to avoid her own, suddenly stops doing this without the intent or the purpose, is a big deal on my book. This means that I have had more time in my hands, and what have I done with this time you may ask. Well, the second thing that struck me as quite surprising is the fact that I bought a book and actually found the time to start reading it less than a week ago. What I am trying to say is not that I don’t enjoy reading, but rather the opposite: I love reading. However, ever since I got here 2 ½ years ago I am pretty sure the only books I have read are the ones I buy in airports to read on the plane every time I go back and forth from here to Dominican and vice versa. The third (quite surprising for me), and last thing that I realized after finishing my entries is that I actually missed writing. I have constantly found myself thinking about what I would write that day, the thing that I noticed, an experiment I wanted to try, or simply something I wanted to change. And so, when I found myself consistently disappointed about the fact that my assignment was over I thought: who says it has to be over? The class may have ended but my life hasn’t, my opportunities for learning haven’t ended, the thrill I get when I achieve something I never thought I could doesn’t have to end, so in conclusion: my entries don’t have to end. And they won’t. I will continue to write. I will write about anything that comes to mind, so the blog will probably take a different direction, but the point is I will be letting everything out. I won’t be holding things in, which means that I won’t continue to sink in a whole of self-pity, resentment, and unhappiness, but rather I will find a way to get through my problems and through my frustrations through my writing which is what I truly love. So thank you, again, for yet another reason: thank you for helping me reconnect with my true passion: writing. And thank you for making me understand the one thing that I desperately needed in order to reconnect with the world rather than to simply go through it but not living: all hope is not lost, people can change, I can change, good things do happen, and life should be lived to its full extent.
There are two more things I would like to talk about: a regret, and a realization, respectively. The former I want to talk about not only because it is cause for improvement within myself, but also because for some reason I feel the need to explain myself. Explaining myself better, the one regret that I have throughout the duration of this course is how I robbed myself from the opportunity to leave a mark on anyone, I robbed myself of the opportunity to have and express my opinions, but most importantly I robbed myself from the opportunity to connect with others. What I mean by all this is that one of the reasons why I loved this course is because within the classroom, during our discussions and dialogues, when I heard my classmates expressing their honest opinions I felt some sort of bond form and even though I don’t know most of them and never will, a sense of understanding was created and will forever exist because I feel like once you know how a person thinks, then you practically know everything about them. And I truly regret not being able to express any of my own opinions, and therefore ruling out the possibility of someone else feeling this kind of connection with me and something I said or thought. I honestly feel like I was invisible within the classroom, which I know is my own fault because I could never bring myself to raise my hand and share my thoughts. I also know that this assignment is not about beating yourself up, but without a doubt I would have done things differently if I had had a second chance. Moreover, I would have liked to create some sort of an impression on you, Rennie, so that at least you could have a face for the name while you read this paper, or maybe remembered something I had said in class and connected the person to the writing. But this won’t happen because by making myself invisible, you and probably the rest of the class have no idea who I am.
The last thing I would like to share is my realization. As I was reading over my entries before writing this paper, I came across this passage that I wrote: “what am I doing here? Do I deserve to be here? Am I wasting my time, and my family's money? Would I be better off back home? Am I a failure? And then the million dollar question, what do I do? What do I do to make it better? What do I do to succeed? How do I not fail? Am I not working enough? Am I taking all this for granted? The questions are endless, and sadly the answers couldn't be scarcer”(entry #12). What I realized was that at this point in my life my questions outweigh my answers, by far. And what this means is that I actually have no idea what I am doing with my life, or where my life is heading. I do not even know where I would want my life to go simply because I have no idea of where I stand and what my future holds. What I do know is my present, what I do know is that the choices that I make today will impact my future choices, my future life, and well basically: my future. So if there is one thing I have learned from this project, from this class, from this prof., and from myself, is that dwelling on the past is worthless – what’s done is done, worrying too much about the future is useless because you never know what the future holds, but focusing on the present is the only way you will achieve your goals, the only way you will be able to say that you lived to a full extent.
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