Week 6: Chapter 16

Well this quarter is now at a wrap, I can’t believe how fast it flew by! Ending our quarter on the dealings and definitions in death really put a lot into perspective. Like I said in the last blog I am mostly afraid of getting old not so much of dying. But the more I think about it I am also afraid of not living. Of feeling as if I have not done all the things I wanted to in life. Hopefully I will get the chance to finish my bucket list! Also talking about how death can bring people together I look back on all the deaths in my family and friends and it really has created bonds that were not there before. Like tiny golden threads  that connect us together, we may not acknowledge them all the time but they are their none the less,  in the back of our minds we know a little more about that person and have that comfort to fall into if needed and that memory of how we came together.

I found the different cultures perspective on death very interesting. I really enjoyed the Ghana people who talk about peaceful deaths and how they come if one has had a long and well spent life and ends naturally surrounded by family. I can only hope that this is how I will go. Unfortunately too many people are taken from us too young and sometime violently. I really wonder about the world sometimes and how nature takes away our youngsters in such harsh manners sometimes. Even if someone tries to live the best life they can and are good people bad things still happen and it is so frustrating. Overpopulation has really added to this. I feel as if the more people on the planet the more underlying stress everyone endures and the more people are likely to break under that stress especially in underdeveloped countries where natural resources are scarce.

This class has really been a learning experience for me and makes me stop and think a little bit longer about the world and how we all fit into it in different points along the lifespan. I like to look at my life so far and compare how much I have changed and how much the world around me has changed and how I look at it now. I hope that these perspectives will stick with me and help me grow as a person throughout my lifespan.

Week 5: Chapters 14 & 15

Coming up to the home stretch in our course these last few chapters have really put a lot into perspective. Currently working in the healthcare field with the elderly I see a lot of what has been talked about on a day to day basis. The Alzheimer's video was very touching and almost a little hard to watch at some points. My great grandmother was diagnosed with alzheimer's when I was young and it was really hard for me to understand why she could no longer communicate with me, it was almost as if my grandma was not their anymore. Just like in the video with the boy on the swing, how his grandmother said she didn’t really like him either as if they were to children playing together. It is very hard for loved ones to cope with a disease like this when there is this person they have known their whole life and now they are just gone and will never come back. I see a lot of people through my work when they come to see their relatives going "don’t you remember me? It’s me ___? come on I know you remember." it is really tough to see that because then it just agitates the resident more and makes it really hard for either one of them to connect on any level. I saw a great video a little while ago by a doctor named Teepa Snow. If none of you have ever heard of her I would highly recommend going to a conference of hers or getting your hands on a video. She really puts alzheimer's into perspectives and teaches many amazing techniques that will help you better understand and cope with dementia and alzheimer's.

A lot of times the elderly are always portrayed as being sickly and unable to complete any tasks on their own. The book refers to how some adults are not as fortunate as other and are deemed frail older adults. I feel that this is the general consensus of what it is like to grow old and why so many people are afraid of it. But there are many, in fact most of the elderly are just fine getting around until their dying day. I feel that many people walk on eggshells around their elders because of this when they just want to be treated as equals, or even the opposite, the younger generation will start to talk to them as if they are children. I hate it when I see this; I would never want to be talked to like that from a younger generation. I would be one of those old ladies with a broom running after youngsters shouting "you rascals get off my lawn!" But I think that many people should show more respect and try to learn from older adults because they have a lot to offer, look past the wrinkles and the walker, because inside they are still the same young person they have always been they just might not be able to do things as efficiently as they used to, but that does not mean that they are no keen and sound of mind.

Week 4

I can't believe we have already made it four weeks into class.  There is a lot that can be discussed from these Last few chapters.  I can most relate to chapter ten since being in my early twenties and going through all these changes the book has been talking about. something that really interested me though was how  when going through adulthood we tend to leave more risky behaviors behind  and settle into a new way of looking at the world. the term the book used for describing these behaviors and the urge to put oneself in life threatning situations is edgework. personally I feel as if my time has just begun for experiencing these feelings. I am more adventurous than ever before and push myself to do things I would never in a million years would have tried a few years ago. maybe I just switched because I was so cautious in high school and did not do a lot of traveling so now I want to do it all. so for me that stage is more towards my thirties rather than my twenties. I wonder if it differentiates from people that have lived in small towns their whole  life to those that have grown up moving all the time, whether one would be more inclined to settle down faster than the other.

Week 3: Chapters 6-9

Lots of information has been shoved into my brain this last week and I am still processing quite a bit of it. So many things from this week interest me and I am having a hard time choosing a topic for the special project.

In chapter six much was discussed concerning mental development in middle childhood. Was caught my attention most was the theories of intelligence, specifically Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences. A lot of times people are labeled as "smart" or "dumb" when in reality that is not the case. Many people are intelligent in certain aspects of life but not so much in others. Our cultural values tend to pick out people that are more intelligent in things we hold in high regard while people who may be geniuses in other aspects of life may be considered dumb because we don’t see those things as much as an importance in our society. For example Gardener refers to nine different intelligences; linguistic, logic, mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic and essential. You can see how many of us value a select amount of these over the other. Someone who may not be very linguistically talented and has a stutter or other speech impediment, but may have amazing logic skills would not be as highly valued as someone who had amazing linguistic skills and not that great of logic skills (these people make excellent politicians in my opinion...) since our society we have many different cultures and languages and being able to communicate effectively is a huge importance. In chapter seven there was a short section on prejudice and I think that besides the cultural and race aspect these different intelligences can have a major impact on that too. Maybe in early childhood someone who had a speech impediment was picked on by another child that was very linguistically talented and from then on any one who had a knack for languages and a way with words that others admired, the bullied child would automatically hate throughout life. This can cause some serious losses in connections with others that may have greatly benefited the child.

A huge issue in our society is teenage drinking and drug use. Since our brains are still developing until our early twenties, substance abuse has a huge impact on how we make connections and our learning abilities. I considered myself to be quite old compared to my peers when I took my first sip of alcohol, but I was still in high school. I wonder now how different my brain might be if I had waited another four years. If maybe I would be more intelligent or my goals would be different. It opens a lot of questions about my peers too, for I know quite a few who started years before me and many that have experimented with harmful drugs. I wonder how much different many peoples’ lives would be, or even  what our society would be like if no one indulged in these things until there early twenties regardless if they were illegal or not. What if alcohol and street drugs did not exist? Would our society be smarter and more well rounded? I would always complain about how the drinking age was so old compared to other countries, but if you are going off science it all makes sense now.

Chapters 4 and 5 Week Two

Through these last two chapters a lot has been discussed on the topics of child cognitive development and how we learn at different stages in our life and how our learnings affect the way we will react towards different ideas and social situations.

The way we learn and perceive things throughout our life absolutely fascinates me, the fact that we can go from such a small primitive version of ourselves to highly intelligent creatures unlike anything our earth has seen is astounding. The rate at which we learn about the world around us and create ideas and theories like little Einstein scientist at such a small age makes me wonder how much children really understand and how much our conversations and actions really effect children, even if at a subconscious level. I can see how a lot of people would argue with Piaget's theory since it does seem as if children's mental abilities are downplayed and that environment can effect learning abilities and the way we learn things differently. I can see just between my friend and families children that each has there own unique quirks of how they interpret the world around them.

Another topic that really interested me was gender typing not only by children themselves or their parents, but the social environment as a whole. Just the difference between a toy car and a doll gift creates a gender difference and possibly a whole different way of perceiving the world as a young boy or girl. Also that the fathers were more likely than mothers to treat children differently, since the mothers are the ones that bond first I always thought that they would maybe be more in tune with the gender than the fathers and have the most stark difference in ways they handle gender differences.