Week 1 Reflection: The Journey Begins

Here is a photo of me in Hawai'i a month just before the pandemic hit.

I’m currently in San Jose, California, right now and have been living at home for the past year. I’ve been doing quite well with my situation right now, since I’m trying to have an optimistic mindset. When I am in hard times, though, I cope with putting my mind off of things and taking a break.

I would rate my writing skills a 6/10. I think I am fairly better with close reading, although my mind tends to go off track while reading. Something that I might have some problems with is time management. I tend to procrastinate a lot because my thinking is that if I have time to do it later, then I can just do it later. This had impacted my relationship with writing because I end up not having enough time, and it makes my writing not clear and precise as I want it to be. In addition, I have problems with trying to add in details and make my writing more specific. I have also not done research before, so I think that will be hard as well.

One thing that I found very interesting from the TIME articles is female dominance. For instance, hyena groups are matrilileal, which means that the families are ruled by the mothers. Even among the females there is fighting for dominance. I chose this topic because I found it fascinating on how even the highest-ranking male has to obey the lowest-ranking female. Another thing I found very interesting is negative and positive reinforcement. Using punishment and negative reinforcement is ineffective in training a cat. This is because the only way to train a wild animal is through positive reinforcement and, “A housecat is a lot closer to a wild cat than a dog is to a wolf,” (63). I chose this topic because I found it interesting on how different domesticated animals can be. Because I have never owned a pet, this is something new that I have learned.