Evaluation and Connection

Evaluation is one method of enabling growth. When confronted with our weaknesses, we are often tempted to hide from them, deny them, ignore them, blame others for them, or rationalize them. These methods of dealing with weakness rarely result in growth. Usually they result in anxiety, anger, or some other equally distressing negative emotion. This includes sitting around feeling guilty for one's weaknesses, and feeling that one is no good. However, by evaluating our weaknesses, we can either understand them or improve upon them. Maybe this way we won't be so surprised when someone else gives us a final evaluation.
There is also more to living the Gospel than obedience. Obedience to God's laws has a purpose, and while it does enable us to live nice lives, the reason to obey God is so that the Holy Ghost can teach us continually.

Yesterday morning I was biking to school on the sidewalk. Sometimes I bike in the road, but today I felt like I should bike down the sidewalk. Yesterday evening I had a very sad flat tire on my bike from a thorn. I patched it up as soon as I got home, and as it was quite late, I was especially grateful to find that my roommate had left me some macaroni and cheese for my dinner. I was more than especially grateful, I was ecstatic, as the whole time I was walking home with the sad squelch of my tire accompanying my shuffling shoes, I was thinking "what am I going to have for dinner?"
Now, it may seem silly that I wrote about this. You are going to think this is rather strange, but go along with me instead of laughing at me. I think I may have been guided to get that flat tire so I could be all the more grateful to my roommate, as usually I take things like that for granted.

The question posed in class is: "Wouldn't it be great if we could evaluate ourselves every moment - to have that learning all the time?" I'm afraid I continue in my obviousness, as I asked, "Wouldn't that require an awful lot of concentration?" And the answer is, of course it does, if it were easy we would be translated by now (at least that's my understanding of it).


Discipline is the main problem in public schools these days. Maybe it's because the students don't have much of a purpose to their learning - many of them see school as a necessary evil, an opposition to free time that adults impose (I know, because not long ago I was a kid. I still think of myself as a kid, actually). I haven't tried this, but I'm told that if students have a clear role in their learning, their behavior improves.
I still have questions. We discussed how in teaching, it might be a good idea to start with validations (the examples of whatever you're teaching), and then pose the questions the examples support. However, method of teaching is irrelevant?? I have more questions, actually. In the lab of my Psych 304 class I mentioned how I believed that the greatest portion of the variance in learning can be determined by the learning. My teacher, a budding therapist, gave the example of a client of his who must work instead of thinking about schoolwork (high school) in order to support his family. I retorted that his desire to care for his family exceeded his desire to learn. My teacher was not convinced. He went on to say that dyslexic children would not learn as well in a traditional teaching setting.
I'm not sure if you understand how I learn, but when I'm learning something, I try to be as critical to the ideas presented as possible, but outside of the sphere where I am critical to the things I'm learning, I'm quite attached to them. This was one of those times when I felt like I had to be right, but I didn't know how. Now I think that I was probably wrong. I have the feeling that there's something BIG I'm missing, like there's something really important that other people are trying to tell me about, but I'm just not getting it. I also have the feeling that it's all connected somehow, but I just don't know enough to know how. I kind of feel like I've been walking around in a house my whole life and I've only now just realized that the trim on the living room matches the picture frame in the den, and I'm wondering what else I've been missing. For all I know, the wallpaper in the kitchen could have the same blue in it that the bathroom rug had in it. I'm afraid I'm not making sense, but neither are the things I'm trying to understand.