Am I more Left Brained or Right Brianed?

 

Left Brain “Critical”	Right Brain “Creative”
Precise in activities (perfection)	Creative with drawing, crafts and art
Strategize activities	Active listener
Chronological thought	Visual thinker and learner
Well organized	Balance of friends and family
Think about things usually before I do them	Act on impulses and instincts
Strong writing ability with papers and structuring	Generally trust my instincts, but occasionally doubt them too
	Have strong emotions and connect them to my everyday life
	Memorize songs well

After doing this exercise I realized that I am well organized and think things out before I do them but also I like to act on the impulses and spontaneity that I have. That can sometimes come around and bite me in the butt. I know that I have many strengths but it was rather hard for me not think of the things that I struggle with too. Because this was a strengths based activity, it was a little harder to complete. After doing this exercise and making the chart of my personal left and right brain strengths, I noticed that I tend to be a little more right brained than left brained. Even though I have lots of strong points with organization, thoughts, perfection, and strategies; I found that I prefer to be more social, creative, and connected with emotions. I like to listen to others and see their insight on certain things as well as give my own personal feedback and thoughts too. My everyday life can get stressful and that is something that I struggle with consistently. But I know that If I put my strengths to work to rather than focusing on my defects I can overpower the things that I don't do well with the things that I do.

Obstacle Course

Exercise Prompt: With a paper and pen, crayons, or colored markers, ask yourself what stops you from starting and progressing and finishing a piece of writing. Draw your obstacles (no matter how rough or sketchy they look!). Some may come from the world around you- like a lack of time or bad vibes from friends, teachers or bosses. Some may seem to be deeply rooted inside you, like worries about perfection. As much as possible, stay in the mindset of free-writing so the drawings come intuitively from deep inside, not from what you think you ought to draw. When you have drawn your gallery of obstacles, give each one a name. Then go to your blog and write about what you have discovered.

Above is my drawn out obstacle course to finishing assignments. When I read what we were supposed to do this week I automatically though of creating a course. The green flag is the start and the checkered is the finish. But in between those I have little red flags that mean I stop becasue of each designated issue that I come upon during many writing assignments. I was able to come up with seven different obstacles of mine. They are:
1. Feeling lack of not only time but energy (becasue I am consistently busy and hardly have either of them, although school and work is priority.)
2. Work (I work five days a week)
3. Other homework (As we all know, this can be an onstacale for every student if you are taking other courses.)
4. Perfection Issues (I have a tendency to want my work perfect. I don't like to do things wrong and get bad grades, it's better to know you did it and tried your hardest the fist time.)
5. Assignment Clarity (Sometimes I have problems with what the assignment is asking for.)
6. Communication With Classmates/Teachers (If I have questions or we are assigned to a group to do the assignment, it can be a struggle to get the information needed to finish the assignment.)
7. Unclear Study Material (I can sometimes struggle with what we are studying and not understand the information correctly.)

After doing this exercise and writing down and identifying my obstacles, I feel it is going to be easier to work around them and problem solve the issues. That way I can successfully complete all writing assignments.

These Days...

Freewriting Reflection

As I started to free write I found myself writing about what was going through my mind right at that moment. It wasn't necessarily pleasant becasue I was very frustrated at the time. I would say that because no one was watching, listening, or reading what I was writing it was much easier to get out what I wanted to say. I used it as a venting session. It was kind of nice and rejuvenating to do so. I do have to say I found myself having an issue writing it only becasue I had so much to say and not very much time. It was like my mind was saying more thoughts that I could possibly write down.
Now to expand a little on what I actually was writing about...
I vented about all the frustrations I have been having with some of my classes, actually one in particular. I was feeling extremely overwhelmed with my life, school and work all together. It's like I had a lot of things to do and no time to do all of them. I was piled with reading, essays, reviewing papers, meeting with group partners, family issues and so so much more. I wish I could talk about it all, but I can't. I have to say that I am extremely thankful for the online Social Work Program at Humboldt, becasue without it I would have had to drop school for the year and start again next year at a different school. That would have meant that I would loose my scholarship, and I definitely can't afford to do that. But on the other hand I find it much harder and more frustrating and taking face to face classes on campus. So I am struggling with it, but I am doing alright. I think it will get a lot better once I have the ways of online learning down. I feel that doing group work is the hardest thing for me becasue I don't live in or close enough to Arcata to meet my group in person, so we have to find other ways to do it. That means a whole lot more than it sounds becasue the groups I have been put in I have consistently had one person that is very hard to contact or get to respond back to the rest of the group. Even though I know we have to do group work and it is a good way for us to meet each other in our cohort, I find it much easier to do the work on my own...
Anyways that is my little venting session. I could probable go on for hours talking about this, but unfortunately I don't have the time considering I barely have the time to sleep.