Sabrina Shao's First Blog

"Just because you're trash doesn't mean you can't do great things. It's called a garbage can, not garbage cannot" (either Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street or a random meme in 2017).

For those of you who were in my psychology class last fall, this quote might sound vaguely familiar. Last semester, my psychology professor asked us to write down our favorite quote on a piece of paper and then put it in a container. I chose this quote because it is so me. It has a unique mix of stupid, funny, inspirational and self-loathing all wrapped into two simple sentences. She then proceeded to read my quote and savagely but unintentionally tear me apart. She analyzed my personality and said something along the lines about how humor is a defense mechanism to hide the constant pain I’m experiencing. What a load of bull. Or is it? I don’t want to get personal in this but after writing the two papers that made us reflect on our lives, I have come to realize that she is right.

Brandt’s “Sponsors of Literacy” writes “how encounters with literacy sponsors… can be sites for the innovative rerouting of resources into projects of self-development” (Brandt 169). This quote reminded me of this story. My time spent with my psychology professor has actually had an impact on my perspective on psychology. Psychology has never made sense to me because even though the theories presented have sufficient evidence, they can never be fully true due to the complexity of the human psyche.

This belief, however, has changed a little since I took her class. These theories can never be fully correct because each individual is complex, however, it does hold up because despite the inconsistency, people do tend to lean towards human nature. What they were taught has a huge influence on a person’s personality. It was only after I came to accept this idea that I became more open to listening in class which in turn made me more conscious of how my own attitude was bringing me down. Ever since middle school, I have been walking around with a cloud of negativity and it was only recently that I have come to realize how much it has impacted me.

In my daily life, the voice inside my head is constantly telling me to just give up before I embarrass myself and often times, I have found myself giving in to the voice. Her class, however, made me want to change my mindset. After hearing what might happen to someone with a tendency to see the bad side of things and avoid their problems, it became pretty real to me that my attitude is holding me back. With this knowledge, I have tried to apply a more positive mindset to my workout regiment. Instead of beating myself up and telling myself to just stop, I started running with one of my close friends, which has brought out my competitive side and start focusing on encouraging myself to keep going so I can beat her.