Reflection for Essay #2

Fighting an Internal Struggle

“To achieve excellence, take initiative to do something out of the comfort zone.” That’s my motto. This essay was a lot easier because I “took the initiative” to visit large libraries and borrow history books which contained all my needed resources. Thus, the most logical explanation for my better writing experience was taking the initiative to do something out of my comfort zone in order to do well. Yes, this ‘uncomfortable’ action of mine, believe it or not, was doing an online library search (after finding nothing useful at Highline) and then taking a trip to the Bellevue library, in the King County Library system, and to the Seattle Public Library. After acquiring the history books, the most challenging part of writing was analyzing and synthesizing information from the books into a cohesive synopsis. The difficulty derived, I suppose, from being overwhelmed by the amount of information at hand. I preferred not to delve into that totally encompassing pool of information. Instead, I attempted to navigate through the pool towards exactly what I needed. This tendency of mine demonstrates laziness. Consequently, I conclude, the difficulties of my writing experience for this essay manifested from a resistance to take the initiative to do anything out of my comfort zone.

I know I wrote this essay well, but I also know I struggled to finish it. Of course, my feeling of being overwhelmed by a massive amount of information manifests from a weak mental state. It’s all mental. There is no physical force hindering my development toward success. In other words, I have the mental capability to achieve this analytical process, but I experience an internal or emotional struggle against truly digging into the information. Taking the initiative to do something that feels difficult and uncomfortable requires a determined, unbound, disciplined/non-lazy state of mind. I do achieve this state of mind in many areas of life, but I have issues conjuring this state of mind while swimming through a pool of information. How can I manifest this quality of mind or emotion while analyzing and synthesizing large quantities of information? There are two useful emotions – or character traits – that I feel are absent when I am involved in this analytical process: patience and confidence. When patient and confident, I believe I can successfully navigate this overwhelming process.

Analyzing a seemingly infinite amount of information takes relentless patience. With this patience I can persist, to search and analyze, extracting not only the seemingly significant information, but the smaller, seemingly insignificant pieces. I am aware that it is a necessity to extract all the most relevant information, and then compile it into a cohesive written format. But I seek to avoid the seemingly insignificant, smaller details, in an attempt to speed up the process of locating the distinctly relevant information. I now realize the smaller details are needed to substantiate the larger ones. When I feel I am not progressing in my extraction and synthesis process, I need to calm and steady myself, then garner the strength and wisdom to manifest patience and confidence, so I can persevere. Patience provides the “oxygen” for survival, for endurance, but the enthusiasm to persevere when the searching process seems like a lost cause manifests from confidence. Having reflected upon my experiences of analyzing and synthesizing large amounts of information, these two emotional traits have been weak and thus direly needed. I need to be patient and confident in order to successfully analyze and synthesize a vast pool of information.