Can I get an award for ceasing to be late? MCOM Week 4

Our society is geared to congratulate people on doing something good, and not typically when they stop doing something bad. For example "We get credit for being punctual, but not for stopping out lateness". 

I think that this is an interesting idea. Last semester I had a 9:30am Spanish class. I loved the class. We danced, sang, shared, learned, and expereinced.  Every martes y miércoles I felt like I was back in my Chile element. But even though I enjoyed the class so much, I am sure that 9.5/10 days I walked in late to the room of seated students prepared to learn. Usually it was just a little more or less than 5 minutes. I often asked myself: "Why couldn't I have just have woken up 5 minutes earlier or took 5 less minutes to get ready?". In my mind it should have totally been so easy and possible. But for some reason, I made that mistake daily. I just couldn't get there before 9:30am. Luckily, I finished that class with a great grade. But even now I wonder, what would my motivation level been like to get there on time if someone had started positively recognizing me for stopping that lateness, breaking that habit, and changing my schedule? Maybe I would have taken that extrinsic motivation displayed in let's say an extra credit point or two to drive my bad habit away. I guess I will never know. I will keep this thought in mind when an opportunity comes around where I can really acknowledge someone's ability and effort to
cease to do something bad. 

Thoughts on the book "What Got You Here Won't Get You There" MCOM Week 3

Since college and high school started, I feel like my leisurely reading completely stopped. I was instantly was inundated with textbooks and homework assignments. That content started to be the only content I consumed. Well that is the only "non-religious content". I still continued to make time for scripture study. 

But this semester in MCOM I have been able to start reading two books and I appreciate that they are not text books! The book "What Got You Here Won't Get You There" started to touch on some interesting topics. The first topic depicted people who have a special ability to know where they are and where they are going. They are so grounded in who they are that we feel secure around them. The examples in the book had incredible talents and skills that made them Uber successful, but it mentioned that they had seemed to loose this source of "center". 

I definitely would love to continue to become the type of person who is very grounded and knows without a doubt who I am. I would say that I am slowly becoming this person who does not change with the tides on how I act and who I stand for. I want to be someone who is crazy driven but dependable. It sounds like consistency and dependability are qualities that make you that grounded person. 

Kennidy's Journal MCOM Week 2

Today I am reflecting on the fact that I have been home from my mission for just about 6 months! I returned back from Chile on July 28th, 2021. This blows my mind because it seriously feels like just yesterday that I was walking off of that plane and coming down the escalator to a crowd full of people that I love. They had signs, posters, and the biggest smiles. As soon as I saw my mom and embraced her, my eyes filled with tears and I couldn't believe I was finally in her arms. It was so surreal to be back with my siblings and lifelong friends. It took some encouragement from my siblings to take off my mask. I had been trained to keep it on in all public places because if I didn't in Chile the police would come and ask us to put in on and make sure that it completely covered our faces. After a chant of "CHI CHI CHI, LE LE LE, VIVA CHILE" and some hugging pictures, we walked to the car and went to grab some In-N-Out (A California classic). I walked into the restaurant and sat down with my sister and best friend Madison Frost. We ordered and got chatting. I slowly started to feel so weird. Here I was completely relaxing and eating yummy fast food, not doing anything crazy productive to help others in the middle of the day. It was different. I wasn’t used to it. The past few months though I have gotten used to it. But the goal is not to get too used to it–I still need to stay out of my comfort zone and look upwards and outwards. 

Kennidy's Journal through MCOM Week 1

My "DTR" with Writing  

 The process of putting impactful words on a page, that phenomenon that they call writing, has always impressed me. I approach writing assignments usually with the classic resent that a student feels upon receiving another lengthy homework assignment. That resent leads to procrastination, which leads to an even greater mental block. But once the deadline
finally starts to stress you out enough to start, you sit down, stop distractions, and begin writing. Rapidly, ideas usually enter my head and I realize that there really is something powerful that I wanted to say. No, it doesn’t fall onto the page perfectly, but an idea begins to come across. I am really starting to prove a point.

 

I love the feeling when one of your good ideas connects to the other and you can illustrate the desired topic in an interesting way. Upon completion, you never really feel like the writing assignment is perfect, but at one point you must turn it in. In my case, I often never read that poem, essay, or research paper again. But on the rare case that my conversations coincide with topics that I have spent hours learning about then craftily portraying in an essay come, I go back. I read them again, and wow isn’t that the most rewarding moment.