Self Defeating Study Habits

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Matthew McKee Self- Defeating Habits “If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your judgment of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgment now.” -Marcus Aurelius, Meditation This above quote by Marcus Aurelius on external pains and the effects on inner self could not have been articulated any better. When an outside force or stress is encountered, our “fight or flight” instinct will immediately initiate. This in laymen’s terms means that when someone [in this particular scenario, humans] is presented with an overwhelming stress, the immediate stimuli response would be, “Do I take this challenge head on and expect a positive outcome or do I avoid and mask the situation at all costs, hoping for the best?” Now, moving to the Freshman Success manual, a “Creator” would in fact be categorized as the type of person who would act on these stresses in a “fight” manner. The Creator would face the stress head on and expect a positive result whereas a “Victim” would mask the quandary and continually accumulate the given stress, inevitably breaking down mentally. Would you want to be the Creator or the Victim here? Will you allow the external stress to overpower your will to defeat this obstacle or will you rise up and overcome this impediment with clout? Picture this: The first day of a new semester in a philosophy class, the instructor, with a cheap smirk vivid among his 5 o’clock shadow, saunters into the class of students subtly conversing among themselves. The instructor, tranquil as can be, begins to apportion fifty sheets of stapled, college-ruled papers to each student at a snail’s pace. The students, instantly stressed at the sight of the given papers, are now quiet as a can be. Subsequent to handing out the papers, the professor leisurely walks to the dry-erase board, a blue dry-erase marker in his grasp. He turns
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