The other day in class we discussed the affects of individual behavior in the presence of others. One of the idea’s mentioned was social loafing. Social Loafing can be defined as the tendency of an individual in a group to exert less effort toward attaining a common goal than when tested individually. Basically, people do not try as hard or at all when involved with or surrounded by others.
This idea reminded me exactly why I despise group projects. I was never a huge fan of group projects in high school, but when I got to college I realized that working in groups was even worse. I was assigned random group members for a Freshman seminar class first semester, and it was easily the worst experience I have ever had. No one in the group communicated with each other, and no one would answer e-mails or group messages. I think the other members in the group just expected that someone else would take responsibility and do the entire project on their own simply so their individual grade would not suffer. Two days before the project was due, another girl and I concluded that we would have to do the project entirely by ourselves. Completing this project caused unnecessary stress and aggravation. The project was meant to be divided up for 5 people, and only 2 people ended up helping with the project. Granted, it is natural to slack off sometimes, but it is completely unfair to leave a massive project up to two people. Everyone’s grade will suffer anyways when two people are left to complete work meant for five. Although we had to fill out team evaluation forms for each group member, everyone still ended up receiving the same grade regardless of the fact most people contributed absolutely nothing.
I guess it is easy to slack off in groups, especially when working with friends, but it is definitely an aspect of behavior that I do not like. I don’t know if there is a solution to social loafing, especially when it comes to group projects in college. If no one does anything, then everyone fails. It’s a lose-lose situation no matter how you look at it.

From the time I have been about 10 years old, I picked up a really bad habit of twirling my hair. Every time I get really nervous, instead of biting my nails, sweating or fidgeting, I play with my hair. Coming from a huge and opinionated family, my parents and four siblings would always scream at me for playing with my hair and said it was unnatural behavior. My mom encouraged me to wear ponytails to school so I would resist the urge to touch my hair and avoid looking abnormal in front of my classmates. As stupid and funny as this seems, my family was genuinely concerned about my behavior. I tried explaining to them that I was just nervous,and it was a bad habit, but my older brother insisted that something was wrong with me. I will never forget the day he was drove me to lacrosse practice and told me that I had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a type of anxiety disorder that can be defined as a persistence of unwanted thoughts (obsessions) and urges to engage in senseless rituals (compulsions) that cause distress. When we watched the video about the young girl who washed her hands 30 times an hour, I knew for a fact I did not have OCD. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder completely takes over your life. It extremely serious and causes distress to the point where people cannot live a normal life. Though I used to play with my hair a lot, it certainly did not consume my day nor did it affect me socially or emotionally.Not to mention, I could go a day without touching my hair. My friends hardly noticed the fact that I frequently played with my hair, and giggled when my family called me out for it. Additionally, I only chose to touch my hair when I was put in nerve-wracking situations: such as public speaking and big exams. People who suffer from this disorder cannot function properly without performing their every day ritual of hand washing or opening and closing the same door 40 times. I simply had a bad nervous habit, that I could easily break.
I think OCD is a serious issue that should not be misinterpreted. The people who face obsessive compulsive disorder cannot control their urges, and cannot function normally in society. It can be explained through negative reinforcement, and is not something to take lightly. I hope people think about what they say before diagnosing someone with a serious life-ruining disorder. My brother eventually apologized to me and instead told me that I was just a nervous weirdo. It’s okay with me, I realize now that my siblings and parents are my toughest critics and were just looking out for me. At the same time, I am happy that I am fortunate enough not to suffer from OCD, and I could break my childish habit of playing with my hair.

During my Junior year of high school, my parents were in the midst of overwhelming me with studying for the SAT’s. I remember performing so poorly on my practice exams, that my parents insisted on getting me heavy tutoring in almost all subjects to increase my horrible scores. One of my weakest areas was vocabulary. I honestly thought that the words were absolute nonsense and had no interest in learning any of them. Nevertheless, I was forced into memorizing countless vocabulary words and was quizzed on them weekly.
When I heard about the Tip of the Tongue Phenomena during class, I instantly thought about myself and my endless struggle to memorize SAT vocabulary. The phenomena is defined as a problem with retrieval, where a person can say things about the word, but simply cannot recall the word. I would study vocabulary words for an hour every night, in order to prepare for my “quizzes” and at the end of every week, there would be at least one word I could not remember. My tutor would tell me, “If you say that it’s on the tip of your tongue one more time I’m quitting my job” Although it was funny, I was extremely annoyed by this because the word always was on the tip of my tongue. I tried and I tried but I honestly would be unable to remember certain words. It came to the point where I would come up with catchy phrases for the word and synonyms, but that seemed to make things worse. I knew so much about the word, just not the word itself.
After constantly restudying and relearning words I was expected to know, I came to the test and not one word I agonized over for months appeared on my SAT. To make things worse, I did not even recognize a synonym of any of the words on my test. This is exactly why memorization is a terrible way to study: especially when you are the type of person who cannot even remember what they had for dinner the previous night. After several failed attempts to learn any new vocabulary, I realized I had to change the way I studied and actually try to show some sort of interest in what I am studying.
Not only did I learn that I despise the SAT, but I learned that my memory has always been awful, and I need to start working on it. I don’t know any of my four siblings birthdays nor my parents, no matter how many times I am told, and I can barely remember important parts of my childhood. I don’t think that anything is wrong with me, I just think I have a rotten memory, and need to work a lot harder than most people when it comes to studying and learning new things. The bottom line is, the tip of the tongue phenomena describes me perfectly.

Recently in class we discussed neurons and neurotransmitters and the various roles they play in the body. One of the neurotransmitters we discussed in particular was dopamine. Dopamine is involved with the central nervous system; more specifically the brain and can be involved with diseases such as schizophrenia, Tourette’s syndrome and Parkinson’s disease. Not only is dopamine associated with these diseases, but it has tremendous ability for drug addiction when dealing with an excess amount. “Dopamine is the type of neurotransmitter that can perceive reward reinforcement, thus enabling it to make the brain feel pleasure when the levels increase” (Your Brain On Drugs: Dopamine and Addiction). Usually the brain feels this pleasure when people perform tasks that make them happy, such as eating chocolate, however when drugs become involved with dopamine things begin to take a turn for the worse.

According to the article, “Your Brain on Drugs: Dopamine and Addiction” the author claims that “using addictive drugs floods the limbic brain with dopamine taking it up to as much as 5 or 10 times the normal level, and the user’s brain begins to associate the drug with an outsize neurochemical reward”(Volkow). Basically, when someone chooses to use illegal substances the amount of dopamine in their brain increases so that they desire more of the drug to feel a pleasure or high. The article goes on to say that, “Over time, the consistently high levels of dopamine create plastic changes to the brain, desensitizing neurons so that they are less affected by it, and decreasing the number of receptors. That leads to the process of addiction” (Your Brain on Drugs:Dopamine and Addiction). The more a person uses a drug, the more dopamine they need to fulfill their addiction, and the less control other receptors have over the brain.

Upon reading this article, I was immediately intrigued and surprised. I never realized the extent to which dopamine played a role in the ways of drug addiction, and just how simple it is to become addicted. I also related to the article because I have seen extended family members and friends face drug addiction involving cocaine, and I never fully understood why it was so challenging to stop these addictions. I thought to myself, how could anyone be so consumed in a drug when it hurts you and those around so much? There is so much more to live for. I ignorantly based drug-addiction on a person’s personal will-power to stop, rather than the idea it could actually be severely affecting the brain. It was always disheartening to see my loved ones fall to the depths of drug abuse, but now I realize how deeply involved these drugs embedded themselves in the brain. The pleasure receptor that dopamine accesses is extremely powerful. It merely takes a few times experimenting with dopamine-addicitve drugs to allow them to consume an entire life.

Below is the link to the article I found, for some reason I could not post it in the blog.

http://bigthink.com/going-mental/your-brain-on-drugs-dopamine-and-addiction