"How To Solve Stressful Situations"
I have 28 unfinished drafts sitting in the ethereal realm of my blog. This is distressing, and does nothing to further their procrastination and remedy their unfinished state. I've thought of a few solutions to this problem, which apply to lots of other sorts of life problems...
1. Despair, quit, and cry in a fashion Mary would respect. Go on with my life as a slave, revoking my humanity and abandoning all creativity and goodness and beauty and truth.
2. Attempt to do things my own way. Grow weary and/or proud, confront dilemma of whether to repent and proceed to solution #3 -OR- fall into despair and lose hope, receding to solution #1.
3. Accept and confess my shortcomings and weaknesses to a greater strength, a greater power. Rest my soul in His arms, lean on His everlasting strength and unfaltering faithfulness, and adventure with imperialistic purpose of winning souls and making a living as a free man under a gracious king.
Without further ado, below is an assignment I turned in at the beginning of this term (Fall 2013), and seeing as the class just ended, now seems like an appropriate time to post this short autobiographical essay.
"My Legacy of Learning Language" a Personal Literacy Reflection
By Joseph Pollard
09/30/13
Psych 192V: Language & Literacy
Professor Brooke Howland
My childhood was a peculiar one, though I, like many of my peers, probably don't remember much of it without the aid of pictures or recorded bits of time. With the bits and pieces that I remember, along with the tangible memorabilia and awards, I present to you my language-learning legacy thus far.
I was raised by a Korean mother and a mixed-European father, along with the help of his parents, my paternal grandparents. Though my mother was a first-generation immigrant from South Korea, born into the Korean War era [the 1960s] and having Korean as her mother tongue, she never taught me or my brother how to speak Korean, fearing that bilingual studies would interfere with American incorporation. Thus, the only language I heard from [infancy was only from] all my immediate relatives from my father's side was the dialect of English common to Southern California. All my relatives are highly learned and well-versed in English, so I grew up only with literate models who loved me.
Much a function of this same love, my parents and paternal grandparents brought me along with them to an old-school Presbyterian church every Sunday and enrolled me in costly private Christian schools from Kindergarten to 12th grade. They [my grandparents] tell me half-jokingly that their scholastic investment in my talents is my inheritance up-front, and for this I am grateful. At church and through reading the Bible, I was immersed in thorough research and cross-referencing and exegetical studies from the earliest age, besides discovering the beauty of the Creator's poetic story-telling ability, His mercy and grace for hopeless mankind, and His provision and special love for mankind in setting us apart from all the rest of creation by inspiring language and thoughts and mores. At the Christian schools I received much personal attention in mastering the languages of the land and other sorts of academic classes. I learned phonetic approaches to English, consistently won ACSI Spelling Bees, and memorized and dynamically recited famous poems, biblical passages, speeches, and documents for prizes and school programs. I learned some different nuances of languages by comparing different mind-frames of Eastern and Western people and how they viewed God and metaphors and music, [among other things]. These schools pushed me to read many classical and non-classical books by requiring monthly book reports, varying topically, which allowed me to put language-learning skills into practice by writing about the reading comprehension gleaned from these books.
In high school and [university], I learned Spanish for five years, which is long-gone by now due to the inadequacies of learning vocabulary without practically conversational grammar. Continuing to practice "literate thinking," I joined the yearbook club during junior high and high school in order to incorporate different media together in solitary messages, be they yearbook videos or adding humorous captions to candid-camera style yearbook pictures. Because of the hypocrisy of [some] students at the Christian high school and controversial-yet-deceptively-taught materials of some of the professors of my university studies, I practiced writing critical poems and theses against these practices.
Moving onward, I just recently learned the languages of logic and Attic Greek, which taught me much about the orderly structure of the languages that rule the world in which we live. Languages are powerful, but I've grown to respect the Potentate that rules and sustains all language, institutes all languages and their inceptions and demises, and knows all the words of the world. The Bible [names] Jesus the "Word," which has a huge variety of translations from the Greek λόγος, including reason, argument, thesis, cause, consideration, plea, speech, and expectation. It is through my Christian worldview that I find the greatest joy and understanding of language, philosophy, science, psychology, and all other things.
I have 28 unfinished drafts sitting in the ethereal realm of my blog. This is distressing, and does nothing to further their procrastination and remedy their unfinished state. I've thought of a few solutions to this problem, which apply to lots of other sorts of life problems...
1. Despair, quit, and cry in a fashion Mary would respect. Go on with my life as a slave, revoking my humanity and abandoning all creativity and goodness and beauty and truth.
2. Attempt to do things my own way. Grow weary and/or proud, confront dilemma of whether to repent and proceed to solution #3 -OR- fall into despair and lose hope, receding to solution #1.
3. Accept and confess my shortcomings and weaknesses to a greater strength, a greater power. Rest my soul in His arms, lean on His everlasting strength and unfaltering faithfulness, and adventure with imperialistic purpose of winning souls and making a living as a free man under a gracious king.
Without further ado, below is an assignment I turned in at the beginning of this term (Fall 2013), and seeing as the class just ended, now seems like an appropriate time to post this short autobiographical essay.
"My Legacy of Learning Language" a Personal Literacy Reflection
By Joseph Pollard
09/30/13
Psych 192V: Language & Literacy
Professor Brooke Howland
My childhood was a peculiar one, though I, like many of my peers, probably don't remember much of it without the aid of pictures or recorded bits of time. With the bits and pieces that I remember, along with the tangible memorabilia and awards, I present to you my language-learning legacy thus far.
I was raised by a Korean mother and a mixed-European father, along with the help of his parents, my paternal grandparents. Though my mother was a first-generation immigrant from South Korea, born into the Korean War era [the 1960s] and having Korean as her mother tongue, she never taught me or my brother how to speak Korean, fearing that bilingual studies would interfere with American incorporation. Thus, the only language I heard from [infancy was only from] all my immediate relatives from my father's side was the dialect of English common to Southern California. All my relatives are highly learned and well-versed in English, so I grew up only with literate models who loved me.
Much a function of this same love, my parents and paternal grandparents brought me along with them to an old-school Presbyterian church every Sunday and enrolled me in costly private Christian schools from Kindergarten to 12th grade. They [my grandparents] tell me half-jokingly that their scholastic investment in my talents is my inheritance up-front, and for this I am grateful. At church and through reading the Bible, I was immersed in thorough research and cross-referencing and exegetical studies from the earliest age, besides discovering the beauty of the Creator's poetic story-telling ability, His mercy and grace for hopeless mankind, and His provision and special love for mankind in setting us apart from all the rest of creation by inspiring language and thoughts and mores. At the Christian schools I received much personal attention in mastering the languages of the land and other sorts of academic classes. I learned phonetic approaches to English, consistently won ACSI Spelling Bees, and memorized and dynamically recited famous poems, biblical passages, speeches, and documents for prizes and school programs. I learned some different nuances of languages by comparing different mind-frames of Eastern and Western people and how they viewed God and metaphors and music, [among other things]. These schools pushed me to read many classical and non-classical books by requiring monthly book reports, varying topically, which allowed me to put language-learning skills into practice by writing about the reading comprehension gleaned from these books.
In high school and [university], I learned Spanish for five years, which is long-gone by now due to the inadequacies of learning vocabulary without practically conversational grammar. Continuing to practice "literate thinking," I joined the yearbook club during junior high and high school in order to incorporate different media together in solitary messages, be they yearbook videos or adding humorous captions to candid-camera style yearbook pictures. Because of the hypocrisy of [some] students at the Christian high school and controversial-yet-deceptively-taught materials of some of the professors of my university studies, I practiced writing critical poems and theses against these practices.
Moving onward, I just recently learned the languages of logic and Attic Greek, which taught me much about the orderly structure of the languages that rule the world in which we live. Languages are powerful, but I've grown to respect the Potentate that rules and sustains all language, institutes all languages and their inceptions and demises, and knows all the words of the world. The Bible [names] Jesus the "Word," which has a huge variety of translations from the Greek λόγος, including reason, argument, thesis, cause, consideration, plea, speech, and expectation. It is through my Christian worldview that I find the greatest joy and understanding of language, philosophy, science, psychology, and all other things.
