Wow.  My final blog post!  When this course began I was terrified of blogging, and even more terrified of words like phenomenology, semantics, and semiotics.  But, weeks later, I have come to enjoy compiling all of my thoughts into a blog post and have been able to grasp and even appreciate the concepts I have learned.  In Language Habits in Human Affairs, many interesting topics were covered that I had never even thought about before.  ThisIsNotThat  has really helped to elaborate on these topics as well as make me feel like an idiot for never considering some things!  The three things that have helped me grow the most are having a scientific attitude, either/or thinking, and of course, the map is not the territory.

It is so easy to go through the day, assuming, make judgments, and never really questioning anything you encounter.  Before this class, I knew this probably wasn’t the best way to get through the day, but I didn’t know how to pinpoint what I was doing wrong and I especially didn’t know how to fix it.  I learned, however, that I needed to acquire a scientific attitude.  By doing this I can continually test my assumptions and beliefs while continually gathering new facts and observations.   Based on my experiences, I can go back and revise whether my assumption and beliefs were appropriate.  I have also learned that it is important to keep in mind that new experiences will most likely create new theories and assumptions that I will then need to test again.

Another concept that has really stuck with me has been either/or thinking.  I believe that it is so easy for people my age, surrounded with so much media, that it is easy to get caught up in judgments about people, events, and things.  After learning, about either/or thinking I started to see it everywhere.  It is just so much easier to see black or white instead of wanting to see the gray.  This is something that I see the most in people my age, mostly making judgments about people.  We are always so quick to say others are either nice or mean, pretty or ugly, smart or stupid.  In reality, people are made up of thousands of characteristics and describing them in one term has really come to bother and offend me.

Lastly, the fact that the map is not the territory is something I will always carry with me now.  In contrary to Aristotle’s belief, A is not actually A. An example I thought of over the weekend was the New York subway system.  I downloaded an app which claimed to be “user friendly.”  When looking for the subway stop you want on the phone, it seems relatively simple.  Until, you get outside and are surrounded by skyscrapers and so many people.  It can be extremely disorienting and very confusing to find the little subway entrance, but on the map it looks like a straight shot.  This example really helps me to see that things aren’t actually what they seem and that we should not just accept what we perceive to be true.

I believe this is the most useful course I have taken in my college career so far.  I have learned so many tools I can put into practice to really better myself at communicating with others and myself.  When learning new information, I always use the scientific method and make sure I check and verify the real facts.  With the events that took place in Paris, many people on Facebook have fallen into the trap of not verifying the facts and sharing articles that contain fake or over dramatized information.  This is leading to people sharing and accepting this information without ever making sure that the information is fact.  I don’t think I would have ever noticed this before, but after this class it has really made me aware of verifying facts to make sure I don’t spread false information or believe things that are not necessarily true.

After watching the “Follow Your Bliss” clip about the Blue Man Group I couldn’t help but think that I am one of the people wearing a welder mask trying to get to the rooftop of a building.  I think that to me, bliss is the pathway to true happiness.  When you find bliss, it is something that gives your life meaning.  I think that bliss gives your life purpose and a sense of belonging.  I know I am only twenty years old but I have yet to find something that I am truly passionate about or that gives my life a sense of overwhelming purpose.

In high school, I was passionate about sports, specifically field hockey and track.  I devoted all my time to getting better and learning new techniques and skills that could help me stand out to college recruiters.  Even after I was offered scholarships to several small schools, I decided to not accept any of those offers since going to Penn State was my ultimate dream at the time.  I thought that at school I would find something I was equally as passionate about as field hockey and track.  I found that it seemed to be the opposite actually.  I wasn’t happy in such large classes and struggled to have any confidence in my intelligence compared to others.

Now that I am approaching the second semester of my junior year I feel like there is more pressure on me to find something I am passionate about and pursue a career that relates.  I often worry that nothing will stand out to me and that I will be stuck working at a job I hate just like all the people in the video wearing welding masks.  I strive to discover something that I am passionate about again, like I once was about sports.  I do enjoy my major and I don’t absolutely hate school now, so I have some hope that I am on the right track.

The more I write, the more I become aware of my love for traveling.  I have not ever really thought about traveling as bliss, but it is something I love and the more places I visit and explore, the more meaning could be added to my life. Again, I know that I am young and that I need to focus on finishing school and preparing for the future.  Also, the more I think about it, the harder bliss seems to achieve.  The members of the blue man group focused on following their bliss but at this point in my life I am more on a search for a bliss to follow.  I am one of the character’s wearing a welder’s mask for the time being, but that is okay, because I know I will find my way to the top of the building eventually.

After watching the video clips and on language and reading all of the information I took the “simple test” to see how well I distinguish facts from inferences.  I carefully read the short story to make sure I would get all of the questions correct in the short quiz.  After looking through the quiz questions I was rather shocked.  How did I make so many inferences while reading a couple of sentences that could or could not be true??  I projected so many details on my own into the story that were clearly never mentioned.  The story never says that Stephanie and her friend ate lunch together before they went to the music store and definitely doesn’t state that her friend is a female.  Yet when I read this I quickly inferred that her friend was a female and that they ate lunch together before entering to buy a new CD.

I projected so much information into this simple story that was never stated as fact, and I can now see how much trouble that can get you into.  When I read this I brought my own experiences in the form of unconscious assumptions and premises to the situation.  I feel like since I’m a girl and that if I were going out to lunch and shopping afterward it would most likely be with a girl.  Those are my past experiences.  If a boy read this and had past experiences of shopping with a girl that is just a friend, he might infer that Stephanie was with a boy, due to his past experiences.

I can see now where I am at fault for inferring quite often.  Many people have told me and made me aware that I have a problem with follow-up questions.  If someone tells me a story I almost never ask questions such as, “What do you mean?” or “Well then what happened?” I can see how this leads me to inferring because I  don’t take the time to make sure I have facts instead of inferences.  After taking this quiz, I can see how sometimes I confuse myself.  If one of my girlfriends tells me a story about shopping with their friend, I would almost always assume it was another girl they were with.  If a couple days later they were to say something about the new sweater they bought when they were with Andrew, I would become very confused.  This could easily be avoided by asking questions while this person is telling a story and not mistaking inferences for facts.

Each week after watch the video clips and read the book, I find myself at fault for committing another communication crime.  I get frustrated with myself because all of these “crimes” seem like they could easily be fixed if I became less lazy.  It takes a lot of work to be a great communicator!  I do want to be great at communicating so then I am grateful to be learning these concepts and how to fix my mistakes now rather than later.  This week’s takeaway is that I need to make sure I am not inferring and that I really have my facts straight and before I share a story that was told to me.  I will now go with the notion that I should be able to bet my life on having all of the facts straight.

I was never more aware of stereotypes, classifications, labels, and categories than I was when I attended Main Campus.  As a member of Greek life there, everything was about the “tier system” or being the best.  The whole process of  sorority recruitment was essentially making general stereotypes and assumptions about each sorority and ranking them based on your personal criteria for whatever you were specifically looking for.  Going into it, there were many people that would make statements like “Oh, you won’t like that sorority, they’re all Jewish girls,” or “Oh, you won’t like that sorority because they don’t have parties with any of the ‘cool’ fraternities.”

As much as I hate to admit it, all these stereotypes I was told before I started the recruitment process led me to come to conclusions about these sororities that I never would have concluded without those people’s opinions. All of these people were giving me maps that weren’t the territory but I accepted them as though they were exact replicas of what was going on.  This relates to what I read in our book about the intensional  method.  I was solely using the intensional method to judge sororities, which caused all kinds of evaluation errors in terms of what really was going on.

I also was failing to index while going through this process.  If I talked to one girl in a specific sorority during recruitment, I assumed they would all be pretty much all alike.  I didn’t take into account that girl number one was not the same as girl number two.  I figured that since they were in the same sorority they must have everything in common.  I failed to pay attention to differences, which is also as important as looking at similarities.

Looking back at my experience, I did find a sorority that I was comfortable in, but I went off the notion that it was a perfect fit for me based on what others told me. I allowed certain words, labels, symbols, etc., to determine my reactions, rather than responding to the real-world referents the labels stood for.  Next time I go through anything like this I was will go into it by using the extensional method.  I will position myself towards the facts and verify them based on my experiences.  I will not assume anymore or stereotype, and I wont think that anything can be marked by “sameness,” which I now know they cannot.

I will admit that sometimes I get caught up in feeling like the world revolves around me.  I forget to realize that there are 7.2 billion other people alive in the world.  A couple of weeks ago I sat in New York City on The Highline, an urban park, enjoying a coffee while people watching.  I was fascinated by the hustle and bustle of the early morning. Some people were jogging, others strolling through the park, pausing to look at the scenery.  Some people were power walking through the crowd wearing business clothes, obviously in a hurry.  It was at this moment I was very aware that everyone has their own story, and that this story is likely very important to them.

It was as I saw some very unhappy looking people, a couple fighting or a woman shouting on the phone, that I was happy not to be in their shoes at that moment in time.  I have my own story, and watching others’ play out made me grateful for my own unique life.  It was in that moment though, I realized that I was watching life happen without me.  None of these people had any idea that I was parked on a bench watching them and imagining what their stories might entail.  I realized that the world will certainly revolve without me, and that it will revolve without anyone for that matter.

When I find myself only thinking about myself, I try to recall this experience that changed my perspective.  Picturing all those people with different backgrounds, experiences, and lives really helps me to stop thinking of only myself.  This experience also led me to wonder:  How often do we do things that have no benefit to us and only for others?  I think that we can become so caught up in our own lives and our own needs but changing our perspective leads to growth.  By doing things for other we can usually see how small our problems are in the grand scheme of things.  Sometimes I become so caught up in my own problems and when I step back and look at how simple my problems are I am ashamed of how selfish I was being.

A change in perspective about the world revolving around you can lead to many great things.  I think it can lead to a more open mind and it makes me more willing to try new things.  Sometimes I don’t want to try new things because I’m afraid of what others might think.  In reality, they probably don’t care.  By realizing this, trying new things becomes fun and exciting without having to worry about judgments that might be made.  The world revolved long before I was born and will continue to revolve long after I’m gone.  When I get caught up in myself, I keep this in mind and continue to work towards breaking the habit of this way of thinking.

After high school, I thought I would never have to think about the scientific method ever again, but here I am in college, majoring in communication, and it is still relevant.  When I signed up for Speech and Human Behavior I had no idea what the class would entail, but I feel that I am now getting the hang of it and beginning to understand.  I’m starting to see that general semantics is a great system for applying the scientific method to our daily lives, and also for personal growth.  I have also begun to realize that people who aren’t very open minded, skeptical, and curious about the world around them cannot continue to grow and develop.

The scientific method starts when we encounter something new and we observe and collect data about it, whether it be a person, thing, experience, or idea.  We then form a hypothesis based on our data , or basically make an opinion or an assumption. Then we start testing.  Sometimes things happen while we are “testing” our hypothesis and we have to alter or discard it completely.  Obviously, there are going to be times where our predictions are way off or we infer things incorrectly.  By having a scientific attitude, we accept that what we think and know is always tentative, and there is always more to learn.

The concept of Non-allness has really stuck with me because it is fascinating that we can never experience all of a thing, event, or object and that our words will never be able to capture the whole of something, so there is always more to learn and discover.  By taking this into account, I feel like we should always reevaluate what we think initially of something.

Personally, this struck a chord with me because sometimes I feel like I don’t have a scientific attitude.  Sometimes I do not take enough time to collect data and observe before making an assumption about something or someone.  Not only is this close minded but isn’t fair to whatever I am judging so quickly.  I abstract by focusing only on the details (good or bad) that stick out to me and do not take all of the others into consideration. I want to start approaching things with a scientific attitude, and never cease to seek and inquire information with an open mind.  While I know that I will never be able to know all there is about a person or thing, I know that there is always more that I can know and if I have an open mind I will not only discover more, but I will be able to better observe, create, and test my own theories.  Sometimes I get stuck in a rut of just accepting things without even questioning them, but from now on I will have a scientific attitude.

Thomas Edison once said, “The chief function of the body is to carry the brain around.”  After viewing these video clips, I am able to to see the truth in that.  We live our lives from day to day without ever really thinking about just how hard our brains work.  I have never thought about how our brains are constantly working and have created their own “models of the world.”  These models then tell us how things are in the world around us.  The brain seems rather alien to us, yet our personalities, hopes, dreams, and fears all depend on this object in our skull.

I do think that it is amazing how our brains develop their complex structures in response to the outside environments that we experience.  How I respond to certain experiences are shaped and molded by my environments.  I am very familiar with the argument about nature vs. nurture and that while genetics do play a part in who we are, the environment we were born into also plays a role.  It is bizarre to think that if my childhood would have been different I would respond differently to my experiences.

I have always had a hard time deciding which side I favor more of the great philosophical debate that revolves around the question of human choice.  Determinists assume that behavior is caused by heredity and environment while free-will purists insist that everything we do is ultimately voluntary.  From these videos I can see how we are not predestined creatures because our personal experiences mold and shape the brain.  I can also see where our genes limit us and we can be imprisoned by the environments we experience.

I am also fascinated by how our nervous systems can mislead and misinform us.  I feel as though I try to follow my intuition but often find myself misled.  I feel as though there isn’t a strong enough line between intuition and perception.  I think my brain sometimes perceives things incorrectly which leads to my intuition being wrong.  I feel like sometimes I don’t take the time to acknowledge my perceptions of the way things are.  If I start taking more time to think about my personal capabilities and limitations, I will better be able to understand my perceptions of the world around me.

Until this point in my life, I have been taught about two kinds of time.  The first being linear time and the second being physical time.  I have been taught that there are twenty four hours in a day and it is up to me how I decide to plan and manage my activities within these hours. I have been taught that we cannot control time, therefore time management is crucial.  It has never occurred to me that I was missing the third and most important type of time, experiential time- time as we experience it.

I know the feeling of “time flying” or dragging on, and the anxiety felt when you feel as though there aren’t enough hours in the day, but I have never taken the time to think about how important it is.  It has never occurred to me how many people make themselves physically ill thinking about the lack of time they have, so much that we forget to live in the moment and fully immerse ourselves in the now and see how beautiful it is.  I know that when I am fully immersed in a task I am the most productive version of myself, not worried about time or what else I could be doing with it.

I feel as though lately I have been preoccupied with measured time, and am not in touch with an important quality of the life world.  With having an older boyfriend who lives in New York City, I feel myself wanting to run toward the future and find myself feeling anxious to graduate and start a career. I work hard today so that I can enjoy the benefits of my work in the future.  After reading “Living and Relating” I am realizing how important the now is and how little attention I have been paying attention to it lately.

Even though I am young and my future is subject to change, as of right now my present is affected by my future plans and goals.  If I wasn’t thinking about the future as much as I am right now, I might not attend class as often or work as many hours on the weekends to save money. It’s crazy to think that without plans for the future, the things I’ve done in the past to get to where I am today would lose meaning as well.

Over the past week I have been trying to focus on the now.  I haven’t been dwelling on the past or the future but only the moment that is present.  I have realized that we live in the age of distraction.  But more importantly, I have realized that my brightest future hinges on my ability to pay attention to the present.

This morning the air was crisp and felt so much like fall as I sat outside drinking my coffee.  Instead of thinking to myself, “I can’t wait until I can be doing this in New York,” I was completely immersed in the moment and it was a wonderful feeling.