Chapter 3: From Single Mother to Sucessful Student by Danielle Barbuto

In this chapter, Danielle Barbuto gives very helpful advice on how to be a successful college student, with a part-time job who is raising a 15 month year old baby on her own. Although most of her advice is directed towards single mothers and people who have learning disabilities, there are still many helpful tips that the average person attending college can take from this. One example of this is when she states “you have to make sure you are organized at home, at work, at school, and even in your car.” this is very helpful tip for anyone because if you are not organized you can feel very overwhelmed, and the less stress that people have, the better they can focus on their present task. Another helpful advice that she gave was when she wrote “Label everything and find a safe spot to keep your papers.” this advices is very helpful to anyone because labeling your work can help you stay organized and even help you finish your work at a faster rate. These two advices can apply to everyone whether you are college with a learning disability or not.

 

Chapter 3: Saved by Malcom X

In this chapter Malcolm X states that curiosity is a great motivation for learning, I believe this to be true. One example of this is myself, I have an enormous curiosity for UFOS’ and Extraterrestrials. My curiosity extends to virtually an obsession, I habitually spend many hours reading books that I purchase and articles online about UFOS’, I just can’t seem to learn enough about aliens. I often have debates with my friends about the existence of extraterrestrials, and other related topics. Just like Malcolm X  says “Bimbi first made me feel envious of his stock of knowledge”, my grandfather similarly embedded this envy of knowledge on to me. He knew everything that there was to know about aliens and it made me curious to learn and expand my knowledge. Ever since then I have not stopped learning about aliens. Today I can rattle off dates, events and conspiracy theories off the top of my head with little to no help from outside knowledge about everything that is UFO or extraterrestrial related.

Chapter 3: Good and Bad Procrastination by Paul Graham

In this section instead of providing advice on how not to procrastinate, Graham offers advice on how to do it well. Graham starts of by saying that there are three variants of procrastination. He states “ you could work on (a) nothing, (b) something less important, or (c) something more  important. The last type, I’d argue, is good procrastination.”  I agree with Paul's statement because it is human nature that forces us to be lazy, so finding a cure for procrastination is basically impossible. Therefore we need to be a type (c) procrastinator, this procrastinator he calls the “absent minded professor.” This is the professor who forgets to shave, or eat, or even perhaps look where he is going while he is thinking about some interesting question. His mind is absent from the everyday world because it's hard at work in another. He writes that the most impressive people he knows are all type (c) procrastinators: they put off working on small stuff to work on big stuff. “Small stuff” as he calls it, is any work that has zero chance of being mentioned in your obituary, for example doing your laundry, shaving, cleaning the house- basically anything that might be called an errand. To sum it all up, good procrastination is avoiding errands to do real work.

Chapter 3: ADHD: The Cloud Lifted

Questions for writing and discussion:

2. Personally, I loved the way that Julie Gilbert began writing her essay. Although the opening sentence was misleading to the rest of her essay, it really intrigued me and captured all of my attention. It forced me to ask questions about what she was referring to when she stated "I'll never forget sitting in the child psychology ward of floating Hospital in Boston. I was ten." I began to ponder on why a ten year old girl would have to be in a psychology ward. Was she crazy, did she murder another human, was she mentally challenged? all of these questions fluttered my mind as I continued to read the rest of her essay. Later on I would come to realize that she was neither crazy nor a murderer, but actually a unique individual who the world misunderstood.

In the essay, Julie Gilbert argues that students with ADHD are “overmedicated and misunderstood.” I could not agree with her anymore. While I was a summer camp teacher in the summer of 2015, I had a student named Marcus, within a few days of first meeting him I knew that he was different from the other students. Marcus was very disruptive, loud and he would not stay focus for more than two minutes. A week after camp began, his mother approached me and explained to me that Marcus had ADHD. I was not qualified to teach students with ADHD and Marcus being my first student that had ADHD, it was very difficult for me to deal with him, and understand him and I found myself getting frustrated with him very easily. As the summer went on, and I talked to his mother every day about him she would help me understand him better. She gave me tips on what to do when he would not pay attention, and tips on how to calm him down. Gilbert points out that most kids that have ADHD also have above genius intelligence, indeed this is very true. Marcus excelled in the classroom, on Fridays we would do multiplication tables and while the other students were still sharpening their pencils, Marcus would be done with his assignment and jumping around on his chair. By the end of the summer I understood Marcus a lot better and why he acted in the way that he did. Marcus had grown on me. I even developed an emotional attachment to him and I was sad to see that summer camp was coming to a conclusion. Marcus taught me that students with ADHD are very intelligent, unique individuals who the world misunderstands.