Semester Clear Quotes

Don't you have class today? (Kyrian) Boy, I'm a backwoods Cajun, I ain't never got no class, cher. (Nick) (He cleared his throat and dropped the thick Cajun accent.) And no, today's registration. I've got to figure out what I'm taking next semester. (Nick) I have a few things I need you to do today. (Kyrian) And that is different from any other day how? (Nick) Sarcasm, thy name is Nick Gautier. (Kyrian)

Our twenties can be like living beyond time. When we graduate from school, we leave behind the only lives we have ever known, ones that have been neatly packaged in semester-sized chunks with goals nestled within. Suddenly, life opens up and the syllabi are gone. There are days and weeks and months and years, but no clear way to know when or why any one thing should happen. It can be a disorienting, cave-like existence. As one twentysomething astutely put it, "The twentysomething years are a whole new way of thinking about time. There's this big chunk of time and a whole bunch of stuff that needs to happen somehow.

One learns most clearly what not to do by reading bad prose---one novel like Asteroid Miners (or Valley of the Dolls, Flowers in the Attic, and The Bridges of Madison County, to name just a few) is worth a semester at a good writing school, even with the superstar guest lecturers thrown in.

I’m still adjusting my mind to all the earnest God talk I’m hearing at Liberty. From time to time, it still feels like I walked onto the set of a Lifetime movie. But one thing has become clear: these Liberty students have no ulterior motive. They simply can’t contain their love for God. They’re happy to be believers, and they’re telling the world.

Our twenties can be like living beyond time. When we graduate from school, we leave behind the only lives we have ever known, ones that have been neatly packaged in semester-sized chunks with goals nestled within. Suddenly, life opens up and the syllabi are gone. There are days and weeks and months and years, but no clear way to know when or why any one thing should happen. It can be a disorienting, cavelike existence. As one twentysomething astutely put it, “The twentysomething years are a whole new way of thinking about time. There’s this big chunk of time and a whole bunch of stuff needs to happen somehow.

ON THE FIRST day of class, Jerry Uelsmann, a professor at the University of Florida, divided his film photography students into two groups. Everyone on the left side of the classroom, he explained, would be in the “quantity” group. They would be graded solely on the amount of work they produced. On the final day of class, he would tally the number of photos submitted by each student. One hundred photos would rate an A, ninety photos a B, eighty photos a C, and so on. Meanwhile, everyone on the right side of the room would be in the “quality” group. They would be graded only on the excellence of their work. They would only need to produce one photo during the semester, but to get an A, it had to be a nearly perfect image. At the end of the term, he was surprised to find that all the best photos were produced by the quantity group. During the semester, these students were busy taking photos, experimenting with composition and lighting, testing out various methods in the darkroom, and learning from their mistakes. In the process of creating hundreds of photos, they honed their skills. Meanwhile, the quality group sat around speculating about perfection. In the end, they had little to show for their efforts other than unverified theories and one mediocre photo.

When we reflect on our daily lives, we might look back at a day that was very stressful and think, “Well, that wasn’t my favorite day this week.” When you’re in the middle of one of those days, you might long for a day with less stress in it. But if you put a wider lens on your life and subtract every day that you have experienced as stressful, you won’t find yourself with an ideal life. Instead, you’ll find yourself also subtracting the experiences that have helped you grow, the challenges you are most proud of, and the relationships that define you. You may have spared yourself some discomfort, but you will also have robbed yourself of some meaning. And yet, it’s not at all uncommon to wish for a life without stress. While this is a natural desire, pursuing it comes at a heavy cost. In fact, many of the negative outcomes we associate with stress may actually be the consequence of trying to avoid it. Psychologists have found that trying to avoid stress leads to a significantly reduced sense of well-being, life satisfaction, and happiness. Avoiding stress can also be isolating. In a study of students at Doshisha University in Japan, the goal to avoid stress predicted a drop, over time, in their sense of connection and belonging. Having such a goal can even exhaust you. For example, researchers at the University of Zurich asked students about their goals, then tracked them for one month. Across two typically stressful periods—end-of-semester exams and the winter holidays—those with the strongest desire to avoid stress were the most likely to report declines in concentration, physical energy, and self-control. One particularly impressive study conducted through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, in Palo Alto, California, followed more than one thousand adults for ten years. At the beginning of the study, researchers asked the participants about how they dealt with stress. Those who reported trying to avoid stress were more likely to become depressed over the following decade. They also experienced increasing conflict at work and at home, and more negative outcomes, such as being fired or getting divorced. Importantly, avoiding stress predicted the increase in depression, conflict, and negative events above and beyond any symptoms or difficulties reported at the beginning of the study. Wherever a participant started in life, the tendency to avoid stress made things worse over the next decade. Psychologists call this vicious cycle stress generation. It’s the ironic consequence of trying to avoid stress: You end up creating more sources of stress while depleting the resources that should be supporting you. As the stress piles up, you become increasingly overwhelmed and isolated, and therefore even more likely to rely on avoidant coping strategies, like trying to steer clear of stressful situations or to escape your feelings with self-destructive distractions. The more firmly committed you are to avoiding stress, the more likely you are to find yourself in this downward spiral. As psychologists Richard Ryan, Veronika Huta, and Edward Deci write in The Exploration of Happiness, “The more directly one aims to maximize pleasure and avoid pain, the more likely one is to produce instead a life bereft of depth, meaning, and community.

Der Lehrsatz -nicht des Tages oder des Sonntags- sonder des Lebens: (oder: warum man Nachrichtensprecher nicht ernst nehmen darf) Leider wird es immer schwieriger, das echte Wissen vom Chauffeur-Wissen* zu trennen. Bei den Nachrichtensprechern ist es noch einfach. Das sind Schauspieler. Punkt. Jeder weiß es. Und doch überrascht es immer wieder, welchen Respekt man diesen Meistern der Floskeln zollt. Sie werden für Geld eingeladen, Panels und Podien zu moderieren, deren Themen sie kaum gewachsen sind. [...] Bei den Journalisten ist es schon schwieriger. Hier gibt es einige, die sich solides Wissen angeeignet haben. Oft die älteren Semester, Journalisten, die sich über Jahre auf einen klar umrissenen Themenkranz spezialisiert haben. [...] Die Mehrheit der Journalisten fällt leider in die Chauffeur-Kategorie. In kürzester Zeit zaubern sie Artikel zu jedem beliebigen Thema aus dem Hut, oder besser: aus dem Internet. Ihre Texte sind einseitig, kurz und - oft als Kompensation für ihr Chauffeur-Wissen - ironisch. [...] Fazit: Misstrauen Sie dem Chauffeur-Wissen. Verwechseln Sie den Firmensprecher, den Showman, den Nachrichtensprecher, den Plauderer, den Worthülsenbastler, den Klischeekolporteur nicht mit einem wirklich Wissenden. Wie erkennen Sie den? Es gibt ein klares Signal. Wirklich Wissende wissen, was sie wissen - und was nicht. Befindet sich jemand von diesem Kaliber außerhalb seines "Kompetenzkreises", sagt er entweder gar nichts oder: "Das weiß ich nicht." Er sagt diesen Satz ohne Pein, ja sogar mit einem gewissen Stolz. Von Chauffeuren hört man alles andere, nur diesen Satz nicht. * Chauffeur-Wissen; die Chauffeure sind Leute, die so tun, als würden sie wissen. Sie haben gelernt, eine Show abzuziehen. Sie besitzen vielleicht eine tolle Stimme oder sehen überzeugend aus. Doch das Wissen, das sie verbreiten, ist hohl. Eloquent verschleudern sie Worthülsen. S. 62-63

Ariely’s book clearly gives empirical verification for what you and I know happens all the time. Here is a tiny example I hope you cannot relate to: Ariely says, “Over the course of many years of teaching, I have noticed that there typically seems to be a rash of deaths among students’ relatives at the end of the semester. It happens mostly in the week before final exams and before papers are due.” Guess which relative most often dies? Grandma. I am not making this stuff up. Mike Adams, a professor at Eastern Connecticut State University, has done research on this. He has shown that grandmothers are ten times more likely to die before a midterm and nineteen times more likely to die before a final exam. Worse, grandmothers of students who are not doing well in class are at even higher risk. Students who are failing are fifty times more likely to lose Grandma than nonfailing students. It turns out that the greatest predictor of mortality among senior citizens in our day ends up being their grandchildren’s GPAs. The moral of all this is, if you are a grandparent, do not let your grandchild go to college. It’ll kill you, especially if he or she is intellectually challenged.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see her. Gabby. She’s sitting at the bar, slowly stirring her drink, looking like she’d rather be getting a root canal. Her thick black hair is down, and she’s wearing this shimmery little dress that hugs her curves. When she looks up, our eyes lock, and just for a second it’s hard to breathe. Damn. She’s beautiful. Despite the fact that we’re neighbors, I haven’t seen her much this semester. I swear, she’s hotter every time I see her, which seems impossible. But despite having some damn good reasons for creating space between us, I’m tempted to cross the bar to talk to her. Then he walks up to her, that scumbag I inadvertently introduced her to when I called for the ambulance last May. But what was I supposed to do? Let her lie there on the concrete, pale, passed out, and bleeding, and not do anything? How was I to know Jason would show up like a fucking white knight? Nothing that day went right. They told me I’d just missed her at the hospital when I tried to track her down and make sure she was okay, and when I went to her place, she slammed the door in my face. She doesn’t see him yet, but Jason leans in to whisper in her ear. She arches away, clearly uncomfortable, and I realize I’ve made a fist. He’d better not be fucking with her. If this is what she wants, cool. I don’t have to like it, but making the moves on a woman who’s not interested is another thing. It’s been at least a month since I saw him ask her out. Have they been dating all this time?

A habit is a routine or behavior that is performed regularly—and, in many cases, automatically. As each semester passed, I accumulated

When one is a student, time is measured in clear increments—the rhythm of the semester, the expanse of summer, which becomes less carefree and more regimented with each passing year.

In general, poor PFC function leads people to make repetitive mistakes. Their actions are not based on experience, or forethought, but rather on the moment. The moment is what matters. This phrase comes up over and over with my ADD patients. For many people with ADD, forethought is a struggle. It is natural for them to act out what is important to them at the immediate moment, not two moments from now or five moments from now, but now! A person with ADD may be ready for work a few minutes early, but rather than leave the house and be on time or a few minutes early, she may do another couple of things that make her late. Likewise, a person with ADD may be sexually attracted to someone he just met, and even though he is married and his personal goal is to stay married, he may have a sexual encounter that puts his marriage at risk. The moment was what mattered. In the same vein, many people with ADD take what I call a crisis management approach to their lives. Rather than having clearly defined goals and acting in a manner consistent to reach them, they ricochet from crisis to crisis. In school, people with ADD have difficulty with long-term planning. Instead of keeping up as the semester goes along, they focus on the crisis in front of them at the moment—the next test or term paper. At work they are under continual stress. Deadlines loom and tasks go uncompleted. It seems as though there is a need for constant stress in order to get consistent work done. The constant stress, however, takes a physical toll on everyone involved (the person, his or her family, coworkers, employers, friends, etc.).

Maybe because you’ve only fucked two boys and this is so clearly a man.

I could have been much less kind, trust me,” The dragon waved off my outburst. “Perhaps if you can give me a reason as to why I should bond with you…?” Despite my insistence, I couldn’t think of any reason at all why the dragon should accept my bond now that I was put on the spot. My hands clenched into fists, determined to sway him, however. “Because I am worthy of it!” I snapped, defending my pride and honor. The dragon rolled its eyes once more and looked me up and down as though I were on display to be judged. “Care to demonstrate, Martin?” I puffed out my chest and slammed my fist against it like Tarzan would. “I’m ready for whatever you’ve got.” The still-unnamed dragon seemed rather unimpressed with my declaration. He opened his mouth to offer some sort of witty comeback but closed it again. His forked tongue slithered over his teeth as he mulled over my challenge. And then we began the fastest lightning round of twenty questions I’d ever experienced. “Do you have any experience in fighting?” “I took tae kwon do after class in college for a semester and a half.” “How many languages are you fluent in?” “I can say ‘I only speak English’ in seven languages, not including English.” “At what level would you rate your intelligence?” “Well, I’m not stupid.” The dragon snorted, though whether it was in amusement or disbelief, I wasn’t clear. He continued all the same. “Any healing abilities?” “I can give mouth to mouth.” “Are you able to be stealthy? Deceptive?” “I trip over my own shadow and couldn’t lie to a rock.” “Your honesty might just be your redeeming quality, Martin,” the dragon joked.

Most, perhaps all, of us were from middle-class families and trying to pay our way through college. Waitresses could clear from $1,000 to $1,500 for the summer, bellhops $800 or so. Now this may not seem like a lot, but at the University of Illinois in the sixties my tuition for a semester was—parents, do not commit hara-kiri—$135.

A habit is a routine or behavior that is performed regularly—and, in many cases, automatically. As each semester passed, I accumulated small but consistent habits that ultimately led to results that were unimaginable to me when I started.

At the end of the term, he was surprised to find that all the best photos were produced by the quantity group. During the semester, these students were busy taking photos, experimenting with composition and lighting, testing out various methods in the darkroom, and learning from their mistakes. In the process of creating hundreds of photos, they honed their skills. Meanwhile, the quality group sat around speculating about perfection. In the end, they had little to show for their efforts other than unverified theories and one mediocre photo.

Fear of Asking for Help If you have social anxiety, it is probably very difficult to ask a teacher or classmate for help. Asking for help draws attention to yourself and makes you appear less than perfect. At the beginning of the semester, Juan didn’t understand a concept in his algebra class. Everyone else seemed to get it, so he didn’t ask any questions. He was also too afraid to ask the teacher for help after class. He didn’t want to bother her or make her angry. The course material for the next two weeks built on that same concept. Juan fell farther and farther behind in his homework and failed every quiz. He felt terrible and told himself he was stupid, which made the problem even more difficult. If Juan had asked the teacher to explain the concept again, he wouldn’t have gotten into this situation. Most teachers are willing to go over difficult material several times to make sure everyone understands. If you don’t comprehend something, it may be that the teacher didn’t explain it clearly. Most schools have tutors or advisers available to help students. Taking advantage of such resources does not mean you are stupid. On the contrary, it means you are smart enough to realize when you need extra help.