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This is a passage from my intellectual history essay titled "Overcoming inferiority". In these paragraphs, I presented my experience of receiving psychological counseling and my memory of one sad night that I traced back from the counseling section, showing my inner conflicts with the feeling of inferiority.
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This is a paragraph from my inquiry essay titled "Apple or Banana?" This paragraph introduces the economic theory of decision-making in the market, which inspired me to learn about the decision-making process between leisure and work for procrastination and further explore the reasons and solutions for it.
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This is a passage that comes from my meditation on an object essay, titled with Tree. This is a part of when i came back to my elementary school to be in contact with Tree for the first time after ten years.
What’s more, while the internet permits freedom of speech, people are more brutal on the internet because they don’t need to be responsible for their words compared to the consequences in the real life, such as a worse reputation and difficulties in socializing. Without facing the consequences of being mad and impolite, an argument can be quickly initiated, especially on websites such as Quora where people exchange ideas on controversial issues. I found that people become less tolerant to accept different opinions on the internet.
I introduced another Internet culture here which is increasing hate comments and low acceptance of different ideas compared to before. It seems people are more brutal on the Internet compared to the last decade. I wonder if it's a gradual effect of freedom of speech. I made the example of Quora to give a typical example where people have low acceptance of different ideas, and I tried to dig more into the reason for that and focus on clarity.
Curiosity about the effect of Internet
I rewrote the curiosity essay because I have been thinking about how the new culture on the Internet such as people's low acceptance of different opinions, increasing hate comments and the emergence of short videos have shaped people's behaviors in the real life. The reason that makes me think so is that the Internet plays a big part in our daily lives as we spend hours on it per day. What's more, It seems easier to trigger an argument in class discussion, and I wonder if it's due to the effect of Internet.
It’s similar to the fast food and fast fashion industry now, where people’s preference for cheap and quick pleasure is reflected.
Introducing the emergence of fast food and fast fashion supports the claim that people prefer quick and cheap entertainment now. This explains the expansion of short videos started by TikTok.
The blooming of the internet in the last century has shaped people in ways that we don’t even notice, and the culture on the internet keeps changing according to people’s needs.
This is the introduction part which points out that the internet has played a big role in our lives, even in ways that we don't usually notice. It also introduces that the internet culture keeps changing. This introduction sets the foundation for my discussion on today's Internet culture and my question of how it influences people's behavior in modern society now.
I had to click “no” on each question. “Have you experienced school violence?” I have been isolated, but that’s not violence. “Have your family mistreated you?” Though my parents are not perfect, they have been more supportive and loving than most parents…The warm light on my eyes becomes dazzling, exposes me, and makes me face my naked self. What can I say? My sensitive and emotional personality, and the tendency to overthink? Compared to people who have experienced severe trauma, is this a sufficient reason for me to come here?
The rhetorical questions help to make the readers feel how anxious i was when I received counseling for the first time. Moreover, showing that I was uncertain about whether I was qualified to be there compared to other people who live a worse life than mine represents my self-doubts about my weak mind and sensitive personality.
These images stay vivid and a sharp voice kept shouting in my head: “Look, you are born to be a loser…” I am speechless; from the moment that I believe it was true, I became weak in front of these voices. I couldn’t fight back all this evidence of my flaws. Before the wire of sanity got overwhelmed, I decided to stop overthinking and felt an impulse to go to the gym, trying to find a void in the chaos of these thoughts.
I compare negative thoughts to sharp noises to convert the abstract thoughts to sensible voices, expressing the disgust I felt to myself these negative thinkings, which further pushes me to take action and resolve my inner conflicts.
What I found out is not being enough in many aspects — the heavyweight, not being social enough, not smart enough, procrastination…It seems hard to be satisfied with these things. I used my past failure of myself to prove them. See, I was always a chubby kid since kinder garden, inherited from my parents who are also heavy; I struggled to understand the mysterious logic of Math in school, looking over and over my math homework with no ideas to solve them; and I remembered being isolated in high school, not knowing how to communicate and make friends due to shyness and a low EQ…
I explained specifically where my inferiority comes from in these sentences, such as obesity, low social skills, and doubts about my intelligence. By depicting in detail what my struggles are instead of talking about them vaguely after revision, my inner conflicts are shown more vividly for readers to understand.
I was on the shuttle at 1 a.m. The compartment was dark with no lights on internally. When the shuttle drove past the reservoir, I looked out the windows. The blue lake looked black and I could only recognize it by the little flashes of moonlight reflected on the surface of the lake.
These are concrete details about the environment of one "sad night" when I experienced depressive emotions. It is due to the learning in class that concrete details help readers to be in the story and understand the author.
We can assume the same consideration happens when we decide between leisure or work when we implicitly put values on work and leisure and choose the one that is more beneficial to us. This consideration is usually effortless — our subconscious mind helps us do the calculations.
I then apply the decision-making of comparing which fruit is more beneficial to choose between leisure and work. drawing the analogy and saying that the same thinking is involved in the choice between leisure and work, readers can easily understand that people procrastinate (choose leisure) when their subconscious mind believes that leisure is more beneficial to them. This sets the foundation of the following research on the reasons for procrastination, increasing the benefits of work, and reducing procrastination.
We can use microeconomic theory to explain our mindset in decision-making. I remember the last time that I picked apples and bananas. Most of the time I just go with the flow of my heart and don’t think too much, but it’s not like picking one randomly by chance. I chose one of them—which means that I must have compared their values, probably according to their tastes, and nutrients, and which one fits my mood the most. The economic principle of decision-making suddenly flashed into my mind when I choose the fruit, which is that rational decision-makers only do something when its benefit overrides its opportunity cost. In other words, it’s best to choose the action that gives more return.
I tried to introduce the economic principle of decision-making, and I used the example of choosing between apples and bananas to explain this theory. This is because I often see in scientific articles that they use simple and daily instances to help readers understand a scientific theory, so I wanted to do the same. It wasn't clear in the first draft how one makes decisions between apples and bananas. However, after revising this paragraph and using more direct language such as listing that one might compare their tastes or nutrients subconsciously, I made the paragraph clearer. This is an example of one successful revision i did.
I believe that these memories will be preserved in Tree and will never fade away. I admire this quality of trees; they symbolize a kind of permanence by standing strongly and stably in the vortex of time, in this ever-changing world.
After contemplation, I came to realize and admire new qualities of Tree, which are its toughness and stability which appear valuable in this fast-changing and chaotic world.
Compared to a tree’s life, human life is like a flash in the pan. Looking back, countless people have passed under Tree, just like me who played hide and seek under it. I suddenly thought of the Chinese song that I sang with my friends as a final music project before graduating from elementary school.
These sentences depict a sudden inspiration, or contemplation after I went back to my elementary school and closely interacted with Tree.
大雪也无法抹去 Even heavy snow is not able to erase我们给彼此的印记 The trails we left to each other
Saying that even the snow cannot erase the trails of friendship that friends leave for each other, these lyrics represent my fine hope, which is that even though the world is changing and that old friends become unfamiliar, the memories of our friendship that were witnessed by Tree will be preserved in Tree forever. This is the first time that I put lyrics into my writing, but I found out that good lyrics convey my ideas effectively.
我们说好不分离 We promised not to leave each other,要一直一直在一起 Must always be together现在我想问问你 Now I want to ask you是否只是童言无忌 Was it just a kid’s babble?
These are the lyrics from a song I sang with my friends in elementary school that talks about youth and friendship. It expresses the central idea in this paragraph, which is the changing world, and that nothing stays constant including friendship in youth.
In poet Szymborska’s “Conversation with a Stone” she tries to make some headway getting to know one: “I knock at the stone’s front door…” she writes, yearning to grasp its unknowable internal life.
The author quotes the poem, and the sentence of grasp its unknowable internal life creates an insight about the stone about its mysterious nature