ATA5: 

In Assignment 5, I spent a week completing five acts of kindness for random strangers. Upon finishing the week and reflecting back on what I’d done, I was surprised with how such small acts can make the biggest difference in someones day. I make an effort to practice things such as gratitude and self-love, but I found that completing random acts of kindness is something I don’t do often, despite it being very easy to do so. I reflected on how little effort it typically takes to do something nice for someone and also how little time it also typically takes. Most of my acts of kindness only took maybe 5 minutes out of my day and didn’t make me stray away from something I was already in the process of doing. With this assignment, I created connections with a family/spouse enrichment class I’ve taken with my husband called Strong Bonds. There are many parts of the class and often times, each retreat you attend will allow you the opportunity to focus on a different aspect of relationships. The first one I attended focused on the importance of showing others, not just your spouse, that you care. Often times, it can come from a random act done, but that random act is important to the person you’re doing it for because it either takes one less thing of their plate, or allows them to move onto something else easily because of your help. 

The image below is a photo of flowers. I chose this image to represent how I feel for this assignment because it incapsulates the saying, “Stop and smell the roses.” Completing random acts of kindness reminds me of this quote because you’re giving yourself the opportunity to take a moment out of your day and help someone else, which often serves as a small break in your day or an opportunity to reflect on what you’ve done. When you complete acts of kindness for people, you can’t help but feel happy yourself for causing happiness within someone else. Each act of kindness I did made me reflect on how grateful I am to be able to help those who need it and be in a position to do so each time. 

 

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/flower-bouquet-aesthetic–307722587049785790/

ATA4:

In Assignment 4, I reflected on love and took the survey on my Styles of Love. Upon completing the survey, I was surprised on the different styles of love that are prevalent in everyday life that I wasn’t aware of before. But, it was nice to reflect on my style of love and how it aligns with my current relationship and ones I’ve had in the past. It also caused me to reflect on the kind of love I’d seen growing up and how seeing the dynamic within my parents marriage affected what I expected from love as I got older. Even now, there are things I saw from my mother to my father or vise versa that I expect within my own marriage and it’s partially due to the fact that there are certain things I see as the bare minimum within a relationship. 

Overall, the assignment caused me to create connections within my personal life. I was also able to make connections to a Psychology course I took in community college when we talked about love, relationships, etc. As I mentioned before, for me, love looks like what I saw within my parents marriage. Completing this assignment just made me even more aware of how the love my parents modeled to us affected how I’d view my own relationships in the future. That was something we spoke about in the Psychology course I took and my professor mentioned that it can go many ways. Ultimately, what you saw growing up dictated much of our view on love, as well as how you love. This is why I chose the image below.  

Healthy Relationships

 

ATA2:

In Assignment 2, I reflected on the person I am now and the person I was in the past. When creating the self-portrait album, I thought about who I was in the past and how everything I experienced affected who I became. Going through photos of myself that span from the year 2018 until now in 2022, I didn’t realize how much growth I would experience until I compared the photos side by side. I also reflected on the difference of where I was in life then compared to where I am in life now. The assignment was very eye-opening for me and I realized that while I may not have great days everyday, my past self would be so proud of where I am now and all that I’ve accomplished. 

Throughout assignment, I made connections to a Philosophy class I took in high school, where we talked about how critical we as humans can be towards ourselves. In this lesson, we reflected on how certain decisions we make throughout our lives are necessary to our growth and our path to becoming who we’re meant to be. The image below that I’ve chosen reflects how I felt throughout this assignment because I felt that when I was younger, I was very critical of myself. I constantly felt that I wasn’t good enough or worthy until I went through the necessary hardships that made me realize how precious I am. I also realized some aspects of my life that I took advantage of, such as the simplicity of adolescence and the excitement of life as I got older. 

Image Credit: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/333336809920503778/

ATA1: 

In Assignment 1, I learned a lot about Heuristics in Social Cognition that I never heard of before. I learned a lot about how the different types of heuristics affect our decisions and how we think throughout our lives. As I read each heuristic, I found myself thinking about times or habits I have that are rooted from them. I never realized how commonly we as humans think because we’ve unconsciously had these heuristics within us.  

One of the main connections I made is with another class I’ve taken for my Elementary Education major, which was Teaching Language to Diverse Learners. In that class, we learned how many teachers tend to stereotype a students abilities based on a multitude of characteristics, such as race, native language, physical or mental disability, or even social class, something rooted from Representative heuristic. The image I’ve included below showcases how by learning about heuristics and understanding how prevalent it is in our lives, I experienced self-realization to biases I had that I didn’t realize I had. By having the moment of self-realization, we can learn how to think more critically and create educated decisions and opinions without using heuristics to create bias in our decisions and opinions. 

 

Image Credit: https://quotefancy.com/quote/1308161/Ramana-Maharshi-Your-own-Self-Realization-is-the-greatest-service-you-can-render-the