My Alarm Clock

    There are only two weeks till the end of my first year in college. Now, I was considering writing about the progress I have made thus far during my college journey, but I’ve changed my mind. Instead, I will be writing about the most effective method for de-stressing while preparing for my finals. That method is cuddling my dog. But why is this method effective for me? Well, let me first start off by introducing my dog, Figgy Pudding. She made a small appearance in my March 25^th blog, but here’s another image of her as a reference...   

 Figgy is a nine-year-old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. She’s very food and attention motivated. Most of the time, to obtain what she wants she will follow everyone around the house whining. Most of the time it’s annoying, but still funny anyways. When she does this though, I use it as a reminder or alarm to take a short break from what I’m doing. While writing my Rational Argument paper I’ve learned that this is a crucial plan to keep from burning out while working and maintain a productive period. 

    Breaks allow me to clear my mind for a bit and open it up to different thoughts and approaches to my writing. During break I also allow my mind to de-stress from the slight mental strain that I experience while writing. Sometimes it is difficult to watch the clock or respond to alarms on my phone. Yet, Figgy is persuasive and persistent which makes for an exigent alarm. So, while you are writing any assignment, be sure to take scheduled breaks and take care of yourself. This method also applies to studying or other time-consuming assignments.

Writer's Block

     This week I’m going to keep it short because if I’m being honest, I’m experiencing the one thing this blog set out to destroy. If it isn’t clear from my blog title that thing is writer’s block. Currently, I have a lot of other writing assignments going on such as an employee manual that I am creating for my work about how to use adobe software. I also have two essays for two of my classes that are both around 4-5 pages. I know that does not seem like a lot, since I’m sure others are currently writing final papers that are more pages. Yet, I tend to suffer from writer’s block pretty easily so I’m not surprised these few assignments have brought me here. 

    One of the writing assignments is for my Writing class, and it is the Rational Argument Paper I’ve discussed in previous blog posts. For a small summary and update though, my paper revolves around the argument that stress is not harmful or dangerous if one changes their mindset about it. Writing the paper has been eye-opening for me, since when I first began writing this paper I actually thought the opposite about stress and thought it is mostly negative instead of beneficial. Yet, I’ve been changing my mindset throughout this paper and have been trying to view stress as positive. This has been useful while writing all these papers I have. 

    My other writing assignment is a five page paper for my Philosophy class in which I need to respond to a philosophers thoughts on a given topic. The topic I choose was love. Since my topic is so broad, I’ve had trouble locating a source written by a philosopher to reply to. There are multiple different types of love and many different approaches to each of them. So, I feel like I’m facing a brick wall right now. As I’ve said in the past, one thing that helps with writer’s block is music. Therefore, my current plan in to listen to my go to song for concentration and doing my best to find a source and write down some thoughts. This may not be a method of solving writer’s block and lack of motivation for others, but for a reference I’m going to attach the song to this post. Anyways, I hope everyone had a good week! Wish me luck!

Maddy's Guide on How To Find A Job

     So, I figured this week I'd write about something relevant to myself that helped to inspire my Rational Argument paper. I know that I wrote about a few of my current stressors last week, but this week I'll talk about something I did not mention last week. That particular topic is about finding a job. For context, I've never had a summer job before other than being a nanny for two young girls. This summer though, since my internship is supposed to only last two months, my parents are demanding that I find a job to help pay for things. Nowadays with people not working as much due to COVID changing the motivation of workers, you'd think that finding a job would be easy. Multiple people are looking for workers to start as soon as possible because they need people. Yet, finding a summer job has proven to be difficult. I'll share why it has proven to be a challenge for myself along with how I am going about finding the perfect summer job. Also, attached to this blog is a video that I've been listening to a lot lately. Within the video are the lines, "used to dream of outer space but now they're laughing at our face saying, 'wake up you need to make money,' yeah." I relate a lot with those words right now, even though I used to listen to this song when I was fourteen. 

    First, I'd like to discuss three major reasons why I do not have a summer job yet. Those three reasons are lacking in experience, personal weaknesses, and no interest. When it comes to hiring a new worker, I've noticed that most jobs are looking for someone who already has experience. Perhaps this is so managers don't have to train someone as much, or so that the completed work has more quality. Whatever reason it is, this really makes me wonder what people are going to go for these jobs considering requiring experience shortens the list of potential candidates by quite a bit and keeps people like me who do not have experience from gaining some. Yet, all I can do as a result of this is try to submit a resume and see if they hire me anyways. 

    Next, in terms of personal weaknesses I'll admit that I am embarrassed by what I'm about to share. For some reason, I developed fears towards being on a phone call with someone along with starting conversations with others. I believe these fears stem from the overall concern that I am going to say something that I might regret or that I will mess up with my words. In my own head, I'm not the best when it comes to speaking to others so I try to avoid it. Yet, two important job skills are working with team members or customers along with answering and using the phone. To lessen these fears, I've tried to step out of my comfort zone and communicate with more people, but for know I'm just going to attempt to find a job that at least doesn't require using a phone to call others. 

    Lastly, I'd like to discuss why some jobs are not appealing to me. When it comes to finding a job, I want to find a job that I will not dread going to or want to quit a few weeks later. I also want a job that requires some skills that I already know. Unfortunately, not many part-time jobs include art, so I'm stuck choosing a random job that sounds within my comfort zone. Indeed has a good system in which it's easy to look up specific job roles, but I still have yet to find a place. So far, I'm thinking about either working at a flower shop or as a hostess if need be. We'll see where I actually end up though, In the meantime, my take away for those who may be looking into jobs as well is to find a place you are comfortable with. Overall, that is the most important factor, in my opinion, that should influence where you apply.

Can't Catch A Break

 

   There are days in which I feel like I am incredible busy, and honestly I've felt that way for a week now. Between getting an internship, taking on multiple projects, and classwork, I feel like I cannot catch a break. Even when I do take small breaks, they aren't calming because the stress of my current projects and tasks still remain. I cannot wait for this next week to be over since by the end of it I should have multiple tasks and projects completed and off my back. Just as one of my favorite song's quotes, "I got to keep on moving." For reference that song is called "Break My Stride" by Matthew Wilder. I'll attach a link to the bottom of this paper for reference. Also, I'll admit I do have this stress to thank for one thing, providing me with an idea for my Rational Argument paper in my Writing class.

    So for our Rational Argument project, we have to write about a chosen topic using mostly logos. As its name states, the goal is to make an argument for a chosen topic using facts and cited academic articles. At first, I'll admit that I had no clue what to write about. I was not sure if there was something I had motivation to currently write about and dig deep into. Plus, I wanted my topic to be something that multiple academic journal articles reference or are about. Having a lot of sources for a topic is helpful for gaining inspiration. In high school, I've written about topics that have very few information and online sources to reference. So, this time I wanted to be a bit more clever about my topic. Thinking deeply into my current problems, I settled on tackling stress. How I wanted to tackle stress though was another problem as stress is a commonly brought up topic that is not specific enough. Upon trying to shrink my topic of stress into a specific question, I figured I'd just argue why it is bad and unavoidable. Yet, as I began to start writing my introduction I wondered if stress is truly bad or if it has some pros.

    That's how I settled on my Rational Argument question of if stress can be good. I also figured that perhaps exploring a new concept would help me to strengthen my paper. If I could convince myself that stress is good, then that's a sign that my paper is effective. Since I now have an idea of what I am talking about, I have begun to plan out my paper along with starting a first page. Due to multiple other commitments I haven't gotten as far as I would've liked to, but this is a start. When it comes to writing and life as a whole, prioritizing is key to completion. The main task of writing is to develop a thesis or an idea, so focusing on building up the thesis should be prioritized and time should be spent towards areas that mainly impact the main idea. The history or the main idea is sometimes important in a paper, but most of the time there shouldn't be too much time used up to make that section stand out. A similar aspect applies to life in which people need to focus on their goals on the tasks that are the most helpful in terms of getting a person to their goals. 

Link to "Break My Stride" (lyrics video) by Matthew Wilder.

The image is a digital drawing of two of my characters braving the rain to symbolize how rainy the weather has been currently, FYI.