We were looking at a diagram of a brain. We all had to go up and label different parts and follow up with an explanation of what these different areas did. I had begun to build a deeper understanding of the lobes from our readings, both textbook and journals, but it was frustrating. It seemed like all anyone had to say about brain development was that teenagers make stupid decisions. Our most recent article, however, was a bit more hopeful. It was just a long list of different parts of the brain that explained all of the different functions. When we discussed it, however, we talked a lot about how brain development can change with trauma.
Things in the brain develop differently depending on the environment that a person is put in. If their social or basic needs are not met, or even if there are no adults around who push the development of frontal lobe skills (i.e. planning, goal setting, decision making, reflecting, etc.) then an adult can grow up and still have many qualities that the articles used to describe teens. This reminded me a lot of my brother. My brother grew up without a father in a home with a mom who had run away at the age of 12, struggling through the rest of her life on her own. He was often left alone, had a school that didn’t care about him, hung around people with similar stories of neglect, and ended up never really growing out of his teenage years. His mom experienced trauma, her frontal lobe skills never fully developed, so her son ended up experiencing the same thing. And my brother was white, so for many people this experience is doubled with the realities of racism. This showed me the necessity for teachers who challenge and accommodate students who have experienced trauma. Cycles of abuse and poverty will never change if there is no one there to break the cycle. This is why the idea that you can work for a better life is so wrong, because it does not account for the lifelong changes that can happen when growing up in poverty.
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I fell in love with the artwork hung on the museum’s walls not because it was particularly beautiful, but because it was powerful. The Museum of Contemporary Art’s current exhibition, “Memories of Underdevelopment” highlights the imperialism and westernization that burned throughout America Latina in the 1960s. I saw all sorts of different mediums used to display the hunger for freedom, true freedom, of artists, political activists, and average humans. But if I would have entered this room a year ago, I would have been bored. Many of the art pieces were letters or newspapers. Some were posters. There was an interesting piece that included a live anaconda. This is all I would have seen. In biology, I have developed an important skill: observation. In this case, it translated to visual literacy.
Visual literacy is when a person has the ability to gather visual evidence from an image and then translate it into a deeper meaning. For example, the art with the anaconda had little to do with reptiles. Below the snake was a map of South America, mainly focused around Chile. It was filled in with crayon, all warm colors, many of them reddish tones. Not knowing the full historical context, I was still able to make a few assumptions. There was some sort of predator that, like the anaconda, seemed to constrict Chile. With the previously described colors, I thought that because of this predator, Chile was pushed to become more communist. This was partially correct. It turned out that the predator was a copper mining company actually named Anaconda. The reddish tones were probably representative of the copper, but from what I know about Chile in the 60s, I think that the leftists usually came from those same mines. I wouldn’t have been anywhere close to understanding this, however, if it weren’t for our extensive work on observations in class. Thanks to biology, I was able to find evidence of what I was seeing, ask questions about it to understand deeper meanings, and draw conclusions based on those curiosities. Our class always finishes our “Meditation Monday” by reading a section of the book, “The Four Agreements”. We meditate to clear out all of our mind gunk and then read to fill the newly open spaces with ways to improve our lives. This week’s section just happened to be about how we often take things personally and/or victimize ourselves, a habit I had actually told my teachers in my POL that I wanted to change. The moral of the chapter was: Stop. This, funnily enough, actually “made me” feel offended. It felt like the author was attacking me and saying that I was the one doing everything wrong. I knew that his words had truth to them, but the whole thing felt impossible. I got to thinking about the concept and realized that one of the things that frustrated me the most was that I didn’t know why I was so sensitive in the first place.
As I went through our next activity, an article called, “The Pains and Pleasures of Social Life”, I found the answer I was looking for. Our brains actually interpret social pain the same way that they interpret physical pain. This developed because we need the help of others in order to maintain our basic means of survival, so our brain tries to keep us together. It gives us little reminders and hints to try and understand one another to make sure we keep our society from falling apart. It was important for me to figure this out because now that I am aware of the sense behind my sensitivity, I don’t have to blame myself for it. This was probably one of the things that made it so hard to give up. I now understand that I am not the victim, the things that people say and do have nothing to do with me, and neither does the high importance that my growing mind seems to put on it. So I can feel social pain, understand that it, and let it go. Next week, I hope to explore these concepts deeper so that I can begin to take on the task of being impeccable with these words and taking action. |
What is this?Hi everyone! This is my junior year blog. Here you will find weekly reflections up until the completion of my junior internship. I hope you enjoy this inside look on my learning! Archives
June 2018
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