Liya Abil- Week 4- Nurture
The school bell rang. I see my two friends coming out of their class right across the hallway. I started speed walking towards the bus that we take to our afterschool, which slowly turned into running. Action music from Mission Impossible starts playing in my head. It was a race, a fight for the best seat on the bus, the very back. The only thing that mattered in my six year old mind.
In the midst of this competition, I heard a thud. I look back to see that one of my friends had fallen down while running. Contemplating whether I should help her out or keep my eye on the prize, I decided on the latter.
While I had claimed the best seat on the bus, I hadn’t felt like I won anything. Instead, I started to loathe myself as I watched my other friend help the one that had fallen.
Guilt.
This feeling had kept me up all night as I thought about how bad of a friend and selfish of a person I was. From then on, I decided that I needed to change as I did not want to be perceived that way.
In my psychology class, I learnt about the "Nature vs. Nurture" debate in which the nature side argues that ideas and behavior are something you are born with. The nurture side argues that the mind is a “blank slate” and the experiences that one goes through builds the behavior and personality of an individual.
I agree with the nurture side of the argument because from this experience, a lesson got written into the slate in my mind that day: Do not leave the important people or things in your life behind. Take them with you and support them.
I learned that doing everything in life for your own gain won’t end up satisfying you at all. Everyone has goals that they want to achieve but they must also have people to support you on the way there. The only way they will support you is if you support them back.
Just as this moment has taught me a vital lesson that I remember to this day, I’ve had many other experiences that are engraved in my head and have shaped my morals and personality today.
Hi Liya! Your usage of an anecdote from your early childhood was a powerful way to communicate your argument that people develop their personality through their experiences; it provided concrete proof that your personality changed due to something you experienced, disproving the “Nature” side of the argument. I personally agree with your point as well, since my personality has completely changed over the course of my life—when I was younger, I used to have a volatile mood (going from happy to sad to mad in minutes), but as the years passed, I learned the importance of moderation. Without many of the events in my life, whether it be an argument that could have been avoided or a bad mood caused by something unimportant, I would never have changed my personality. I want to add that the “Nature” side of the argument essentially implies that a person’s personality is defined at birth, which completely ignores any potential for a person to change over the course of their life—this is simply untrue. On another note, your point about happiness being sourced from the people around you (instead of from the things you did) wraps up your blog post in a thought-provoking manner.
ReplyDeleteI really liked your mini story about how you changed the way you wanted to be perceived and acted because of your friend who fell down while you were trying to get a good seat on the bus. This sort of relates to my post, which was about how one person could change your life forever, whether it was about music, or what you liked, and in this case, it was how you acted. When you were talking about the "Nature vs. Nurture" and you mentioned the "blank slate," I immediately thought of John Locke from last year's AP European History course. He had said that at birth, the child's mind was a blank slate, and that how they acted and thought was completely based off of someone's experiences and environment. In this case, your wanting to change was probably not completely based off of a singular incident, but nevertheless, it was indeed based off of your experiences. Your realization about not leaving important people or things behind really rang with me. As you pointed out, life is more fulfilling when you share it with others who can support you, and you also support them back. It is really interesting to see how our actions and what they bring can change us, no matter how small, such as you prioritizing a bus seat over a friend as a six year old.
ReplyDeleteHey Liya! I think your blog this week is very interesting and I agree with you that you should always make sure to priotize your people rather than the things you could get. Humans are social animals we need others to support us always, so it makes sense why you fet bad seeing your friend get helped by someone and having no one to share the good seat with. My favortive thing to do is share little treats with people. My favortive food is french fries and my dad would buy them for me as a reward for good behavior or just when we were bored when we went to send my brother to his classes. I would always insist to save some for my brother even though all the fries were for me, I think I did that because I love to share and also partly because my dad would always praise me for being so considerate. This trait carried on as I got older, since I believe that it is much more pleasing to see my friends smile than to eat a treat by myself.
ReplyDeleteHi Liya! I think that your hook, the incorporation of an anecdote was effective and intriguing. I also like the other rhetorical techniques that you used, such as the usage of an one sentence passage, which really emphasized your feelings of guilt relating to the earlier anecdote. I also really like how you embedded the link of the article while mentioning its title, which is a really smart way to smoothly incorporate your article into your writing, making it convenient for the reader to locate it. Overall, I think that your usage of small rhetorical choices heavily improves the overall feeling and quality of your blog. I also really liked your choice of topic within the blog. I have always been somewhat interested in sociology and psychology, and I really like the argument that you brought up: Nature vs Nurture. Personally, I think that while nature, and genetics may play a part, I personally lean more with the nurture side of the argument. While there is some evidence from nature pertaining to the "nature" side of the argument, such as the disturbing stories of a pet thought to be domesticated becoming wild, I do think that animals, especially humans, who contain the ability to adapt, are more heavily affected by their life experiences.
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