Q4. Fredrick Douglass had difficulty in trying to understand the word abolition after hearing the word come up in conversations between people about slavery. He then learned different issues with slaves that would be considered as an act of abolition. He tried using a dictionary, but it wasn’t much help at all. The most he learned at that moment that it was “The Act of Abolition”. The Mistress didn’t want Douglass getting his hands on a newspaper because she didn’t want Douglass to be informed on “The Acts of Abolition” that was happening at that time. When Fedrick Douglass was finally able to get his hands on a Newspaper, he was finally informed of “the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and the slave trade between states”.Â
Throughout my entire educational journey, I’ve went through so many hardships, but soon I’ll be where I need to be. I can definitely blame my lack of motivation since it’s the root of my problems. While I take on school, work, and trying to figure out what hobby I should stick with, I find that as time goes on, I begin to feel like doing less. I started procrastinating more, consuming more sweets, and even doubting the amazing person I know I am. I kept on blaming everything else for my downfall a lot which is how I digged myself in a dipper hole. Granted, I was going through some relationship issues with close ones and trying to teach myself about basic things I didn’t learn or even get helped with when growing up, but I fell too deep, more than I should have.Â
I got tired of being such a weak individual and I was truly disgusted with myself. I realized there are people who goes through 10x more of a struggle than me, and I have the ability to reach great heights in life. The cure to my lack of motivation, was learning that motivation is the greed of success. I realized I had to let go of needing to feel motivation because I need to get stuff done, I had to start to start becoming more disciplined. I stopped checking social media, and started getting back on track with my eating and exercise habits, because all I was doing for the longest amount of time, was looking for quick boost of dopamine, our feel-good hormone. Stuff like playing games and eating out would give you higher but temporary dopamine levels, but I had to change. I now make decisions instead of being indecisive, and I stick with it even if something feels off, because now I’m able to learn more achieve more, and stay of my grind to success. I finally discovered that I am a person who acts like the people I want to be around, people that stay on their toes, looking for any possible way they can improve on themselves and their daily lives. Â
Dear Jemel:
Good work on Part A!
Part B: Your resilience story is wonderful and insprational! I definitely see the new better version of yourself in our class. I can tell you have done the readings before class, as required. You are always paying close attention and reading along with your text and annotating. I also see you contributing thoughtful ideas to our discussion. So you are on the right path!
Going forward with this piece of writing: Could you give a specific example of a situtation when you were lacking motivation (for example, in high school math class when you were failing, describe a specific moment when you lapsed into bad habits and then describe what specific steps you took to put yourself back on track). YOu may want to build on this small piece of writing for your Education Narrative, our first Major Assignment coming up.
Best,
Prof. Wu
I felt you when you talked about your lack of motivation. I too felt the same during the quartine school year. What I found that helped me, my motivation, was the dream that I had of myself for the future. It was enough to get me off my behind and go after it.