The following information is used for educational purposes only.
SUPPORTING STUDENTS
Seeking Human Connections When All We’ve Got Are Virtual Ones
Strategies for Advising Students During Disruptive Times
by Adva Waranyuwat
April 1, 2020
As educators, we’re facing a steep learning curve as we work through the mechanics of teaching online in our new COVID-19 reality. But we can’t forget how difficult this is for students, too. They’re learning to interact with us—and each other—through internet connections only. They’re trying to digest and absorb complicated content and concepts through unfamiliar online learning platforms. And they’re doing all of this while settling into new routines in their home spaces. In short, we are all adjusting.
Layer on top of this the psychological and emotional barriers that are emerging for all of us in virtual environments. We have lost physical proximity and the cues that come with it. The absence of nonverbal communication also means that we’ve lost a critical ability to show and receive care and attention.
So, as you’re interacting with students, whether in your virtual classrooms or in an advisory setting, you can’t lose sight of these new cultural and physical realities. Students may be dealing with any number of cultural and physical barriers—six of which I’ll mention below. As educators, we have to be ready for the consequences of these barriers, which are very likely to surface as we work with students. I’ll also offer some suggestions for how to mitigate the effects of these barriers, based on my experience advising students at Olin College. Finally, I will offer some sample language to use with students as you navigate this new landscape together.
6 Barriers That Students Are Now Facing—and That Educators Should Heed
Inequities are magnified. While inequities exist everywhere, college campuses have at least some equalizing effect when it comes to giving students access to safe spaces and resources, access to you as faculty, and access to study and learning spaces. The physical infrastructure of a campus and the organization that comes with it all serve as stabilizing forces in students’ lives. That is now gone, so preexisting inequities are magnified. Also, students who have difficult home situations can put those situations behind them while they’re on campus—they can cultivate new identities for themselves. This new virtual setup might feel like a spotlight on students’ home lives that they never asked for.
Noticing a discrepancy in performance impacts performance. Students having only the context of physical classes to base their school schema upon will notice all the ways they are falling short of their typical performance. This might magnify the stress they feel about classes and successfully completing the semester. As with many things, this will most adversely impact those students who already struggle academically. Furthermore, students—particularly undergraduates—have a picture in their minds of what college is like. Reconciling that picture with this new remote one, especially in a household that is less conducive to productive learning, might be a great challenge for some students.
Reactions might be more pronounced. As faculty and support staff, we are trying to balance the many parts of our lives that we’ve always juggled. Until recently, we had the built-in benefit of physical and social geography that enabled us to separate our responsibilities. Not anymore. The same is true for students. So in these difficult times, the stress might become more intense. If students are having connectivity issues, for example, they might get anxious and think any number of things: my instructor and peers will think that I’m skipping class; they will wonder what is wrong or they will make assumptions about me or my home life; I’m going to fail because I can’t go to class; I’ll never have reliable internet and I won’t get an internship or job or get into grad school. As instructors and advisors, we need to be mindful of this sort of tendency and know that as things settle in, “this too shall pass.”
Instructors are different from advisors. Students who are feeling intimidated and isolated within this new system might be more sensitive to the authority of an instructor versus the support of an advisor. Students who were already practicing avoidant behaviors at least had the benefit of being packed into a class or discussion section where avoiding people is not so simple. Avoidance is often the first and most predictable response to stress—so if a student is struggling in your class, you can infer that they might not participate as readily. The difference now is that it’s not just because they didn’t understand the assignment that students are struggling. It could be because their parents are yelling at each other, or they had to take care of their siblings or their own children, or they’re stressed about money. Because the struggles may now be much more personal, a student might feel even less inclined to come forward for help because they don’t want to have to explain their personal lives to their teachers. This is where an advising rather than instructional mindset can be a critical link for you to help students acclimate to school as a part of their home life.
Families don’t know how your college works. Some families will be understanding and fine, but some families might see students online with their “friends” and think that they are goofing off or not working. Any time students are connecting with peers, who actually play a very important support role for students, they might need to justify, minimize, or explain this behavior to their family. That’s not the case with an advisor. If a student is meeting with an advisor, parents or families might be less inclined to judge the meeting and will leave students alone. In this way, advisors can play a more reliable support role for students. Also, just like it’s hard to tell a work story to someone who doesn’t understand your workplace, students may prefer to talk about school with an adult from school—not with their parents or family members. This is a role you, as an advisory instructor, can play.
As time drags on, we drag too. As the pandemic persists, you might notice strain and weariness occurring in both you and your students. Sourcing inspiration and getting motivated to prioritize work in the face of global trauma may become increasingly challenging, especially when you’re working remotely. Even if students are “meeting” with people all day long, they can feel quite lonely because of the unnatural way in which we are forced to interact online. Your state of mind as an instructor or advisor is a clue to your students’ state of mind. When you feel isolation or strain, your students are likely feeling it, too. If you are feeling particularly drained about your own work, it may be the perfect opportunity to take a step back, check in with students, be transparent about how hard this situation is, and commune around this shared experience.
“Let students know that when you speak with them as an advisor, it is different from when you speak to them in class. As an advisor, you are there to help students understand their academic landscape and to help them as they make decisions within that landscape.”
What Educators Can Do to Help
As educators, we are in a unique position to help our students. We wear multiple hats all the time, but not always explicitly. It’s important to distinguish our role as an advisor from our role as an instructor.
Let students know that when you speak with them as an advisor, it is different from when you speak to them in class. In advisory moments, you aren’t assessing students’ performance, and you don’t have specific learning or content goals that you want them to internalize. As an advisor, you are there to help students understand their academic landscape and to help them as they make decisions within that landscape. It’s also wise to make yourself more regularly available to individual students and to your student roster as a whole. Approaching your students as an advisor might be your best bet, particularly for students who are struggling in class. They’re more likely to avoid an instructor than an advisor. If particular students were already on your radar before you left campus, make special effort to meet and check in with them now.
The best way to circumvent existing inequities is to openly offer your time to everyone. For those who don’t respond, don’t be afraid to reach out explicitly offering this support. I can’t tell you how many students have been extremely happy to get a check-in from me and really want to maintain some sort of non-class connection. It means a lot to them. If you have the time and resources, set up a regular check-in with all your students and keep those conversations light. If a student sounds like they are having a hard time, send a private chat asking them for an individual meeting.
Use This Language in Case You Get Stuck
Here are some specific ideas for starting conversation when you’re advising students one on one.
Use general check-in questions, but also be specific:
How are things going with school right now? Is anything surprising for you about this setup or how classes are going?
What’s on your mind these days?
Are you keeping up with friends or is it hard to maintain that connection?
What are you learning about yourself in terms of being able to focus and establish a schedule?
What is a day in your life like now? How do you occupy your time these days?
Is there anything that you feel particularly excited to work on or think about? Do you have space to build that into your life?
For those who are struggling academically, lean into that conversation with questions like these:
I know that [class name] has been tough for a lot of students. How are you feeling in that class?
If you have a high level of trust, ask: Have you been submitting your work on time? How many assignments have you had? Do you know the deadlines?
What do you think will be the biggest challenge for you in [class name]?
What are some of the fears that you have about [class name]?
Do you feel able to access support resources? What do you think will be helpful?
Advising student groups in the US is trickier because of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), so keep things broad and general and make a statement that you don’t want to go into personal performance issues. Instead, state that you are hoping to get a general picture of how things are going for the group.
Here are some ideas to help you start a group conversation:
Ask what the students think of the grading system and how it might impact their classes in light of the remote learning setup.
Ask if there any activities or projects that people might be struggling to work on from home.
Learn how different classes are doing things and how it’s going broadly.
Get updates about coronavirus that the students may or may not have.
Do a collaborative activity like co-drawing on the whiteboard in Zoom or talking about a current event topic or issue.
Tell your students how this situation is hitting you and your family; normalize some of the concerns listed above (for example, it’s normal to have strong reactions to things because we are under more stress).
Have students share any funny or heartwarming memes they have seen or clips of shows that they are enjoying lately; share any of your own.
During this difficult time, the intangible element that so many of us seek is human connection—yet all we’ve got are electronic means. This connection is extremely challenging to achieve digitally. Remember that, in this way, we are not so different from our students. Recognizing contextual clues and psycho-emotional barriers—and responding with an advising approach—is a good step toward finding and nurturing that connection with your students.
Source:https://hbsp.harvard.edu/inspiring-minds/seeking-human-connections-when-all-weve-got-are-virtual-ones
In this blog, teachers, students and all those who have some kind of interest in the English language will find useful, interesting, curious and funny things to be used in their classes or for their personal enjoyment.
Thursday, April 23, 2020
Sunday, April 19, 2020
SOCIEDAD-San Expedito: quién fue y por qué los fieles celebran su día cada 19 de abril
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
SOCIEDAD | CORONAVIRUS
San Expedito: quién fue y por qué los fieles celebran su día cada 19 de abril
El patrono de las causas justas y urgentes no recibirá visitas este año en su santuario de Balvanera Crédito: Facebook Santuario de San Expedito
19 de Abril de 2020
San Expedito es, según la creencia católica, el santo de las causas justas y urgentes . En la Argentina, su figura concita cada año a una mayor cantidad de devotos. Cada 19 de abril, el día que la liturgia recuerda el martirio y la muerte del santo, una multitud se dirige a venerarlo, a rogarle o a agradecerle en la Parroquia de Nuestra Señora de Balvanera , en el cruce de Azcuénaga y Bartolomé Mitre, donde se encuentra el santuario del santo.
Pero este año será distinto. A causa de la cuarentena impuesta para evitar la expansión de la pandemia de coronavirus, los 80.000 fieles que sueles acudir a la citada iglesia -manifestación que se repite en muchísimas partes del país- deberán rezarle al santo en la intimidad de sus hogares. La iglesia estará cerrada. No habrá misas, ni procesiones, ni reuniones para saludar al patrono de lo justo y lo urgente en su día.
De todas formas, la página de Facebook de la parroquia porteña donde el santo es visitado cada año transmitirá en vivo diferentes celebraciones en su honor, que también podrán verse en el canal de YouTube del Santuario San Expedito.
San Expedito es, después de San Cayetano, el santo que más convoca en su día en la ciudad de Buenos Aires Crédito: Facebook Santuario de San Expedito
"Recuerden hacernos llegar sus intenciones y también podemos preparar un altar en casa con la imagen de nuestro querido San Expedito y así desde nuestros hogares celebrar la fiesta Anual", dice la página oficial del santuario.
La historia de San Expedito
San Expedito fue un comandante de las legiones romanas, que tuvo a su cargo miles de hombres y sirvió al emperador Diocleciano, entre los siglos III y IV. Creen quienes estudiaron su vida que combatió a los bárbaros en el Oriente del imperio romano.
La representación del santo es la de un soldado romano con una cruz en una mano y un cuervo bajo su pie derecho
Su conversión al cristianismo fue lo que desencadenó la persecución de sus propios compatriotas romanos. Expedito fue martirizado y luego decapitado el 19 de abril del año 303, según algunos historiadores, en la ciudad de Melitene. Junto a él, murieron también otros legionarios que también se habían convertido.
La tradición narra que, en el momento de convertirse al cristianismo, previo a tomar su decisión definitiva, a Expedito se le apareció el demonio en forma de cuervo que le decía: "Cras, cras, cras", que en latín significa "mañana".
Pero el santo no aceptó la postergación de su fe y, con un furioso impulso, aplastó al cuervo mientras decía: "Hodie, hodie, hodie", que significa "hoy". Por esa cualidad para no retrasar su decisión se lo consideró luego el patrono de las causas urgentes.
Este año la veneración al santo deberá ser dentro de cada hogar Crédito: Facebook Santuario de San Expedito
Las representaciones del santo
Hoy, en la mayor parte de las representaciones, se lo ve con una cruz en su mano derecha elevada a la altura de su cabeza que dice "hodie", mientras que, debajo de sus pies, aplastado y vencido, se lo ve al cuervo con un mensaje que dice "cras".
El ropaje del santo es, todavía, el de un soldado romano. En algunos casos, lleva con él una hoja de palma que expresa su martirio.
Expedito también es considerado protector de jóvenes, estudiantes y enfermos ,y si bien no figura en el Martirologio Romano -que registra todos los santos oficiales de la Iglesia Católica-, su figura y devoción crecen año a año y es uno de los santos más convocantes dentro del catolicismo.
De hecho, en la ciudad de Buenos Aires, la cantidad de gente convocada cada 19 de abril es sólo superada por las personas que cada 7 de agosto visitan la Iglesia de San Cayetano, en Liniers.
La oración a San Expedito
Soberano San Expedito,
El socorrista por excelencia de las causas justas y urgentes,
Intercede en mi nombre frente al Dios padre todopoderoso,
para que me auxilie en estos momentos de desesperación
y angustia solemne.
Soberano San Expedito,
tú que eres el guerrero santo, el fiel servidor de Dios.
Tú que eres el Santo de los afligidos,
El Santo de los casos urgentes;
dame de tu protección, auxíliame,
dame de tus virtudes y fortaléceme con
coraje, valentía, calma, serenidad y fuerza.
Atiende mi suplica
(Realiza tu petición con fe).
Soberano San Expedito,
ayúdame a superar estas complicadas circunstancias.
Cuídame de toda amenaza, de todo peligro,
de personas y espíritus que busquen dañarme,
cuida a mi familia, amigos y hermanos.
Atiende mi suplica prontamente.
Trae a mi ser y mi hogar nuevamente la paz,
que un día nos dio tranquilidad para vivir.
¡Soberano San Expedito!
Te doy gracias eternamente, siempre te alabaré
y esparciré tu nombre entre todos los que desean alguien como tú,
un santo que oiga y atienda con urgencia.
Amén.
Fuente:https://www.lanacion.com.ar/sociedad/san-expedito-quien-fue-fieles-celebran-oracion-nid2355805
SOCIEDAD | CORONAVIRUS
San Expedito: quién fue y por qué los fieles celebran su día cada 19 de abril
El patrono de las causas justas y urgentes no recibirá visitas este año en su santuario de Balvanera Crédito: Facebook Santuario de San Expedito
19 de Abril de 2020
San Expedito es, según la creencia católica, el santo de las causas justas y urgentes . En la Argentina, su figura concita cada año a una mayor cantidad de devotos. Cada 19 de abril, el día que la liturgia recuerda el martirio y la muerte del santo, una multitud se dirige a venerarlo, a rogarle o a agradecerle en la Parroquia de Nuestra Señora de Balvanera , en el cruce de Azcuénaga y Bartolomé Mitre, donde se encuentra el santuario del santo.
Pero este año será distinto. A causa de la cuarentena impuesta para evitar la expansión de la pandemia de coronavirus, los 80.000 fieles que sueles acudir a la citada iglesia -manifestación que se repite en muchísimas partes del país- deberán rezarle al santo en la intimidad de sus hogares. La iglesia estará cerrada. No habrá misas, ni procesiones, ni reuniones para saludar al patrono de lo justo y lo urgente en su día.
De todas formas, la página de Facebook de la parroquia porteña donde el santo es visitado cada año transmitirá en vivo diferentes celebraciones en su honor, que también podrán verse en el canal de YouTube del Santuario San Expedito.
San Expedito es, después de San Cayetano, el santo que más convoca en su día en la ciudad de Buenos Aires Crédito: Facebook Santuario de San Expedito
"Recuerden hacernos llegar sus intenciones y también podemos preparar un altar en casa con la imagen de nuestro querido San Expedito y así desde nuestros hogares celebrar la fiesta Anual", dice la página oficial del santuario.
La historia de San Expedito
San Expedito fue un comandante de las legiones romanas, que tuvo a su cargo miles de hombres y sirvió al emperador Diocleciano, entre los siglos III y IV. Creen quienes estudiaron su vida que combatió a los bárbaros en el Oriente del imperio romano.
La representación del santo es la de un soldado romano con una cruz en una mano y un cuervo bajo su pie derecho
Su conversión al cristianismo fue lo que desencadenó la persecución de sus propios compatriotas romanos. Expedito fue martirizado y luego decapitado el 19 de abril del año 303, según algunos historiadores, en la ciudad de Melitene. Junto a él, murieron también otros legionarios que también se habían convertido.
La tradición narra que, en el momento de convertirse al cristianismo, previo a tomar su decisión definitiva, a Expedito se le apareció el demonio en forma de cuervo que le decía: "Cras, cras, cras", que en latín significa "mañana".
Pero el santo no aceptó la postergación de su fe y, con un furioso impulso, aplastó al cuervo mientras decía: "Hodie, hodie, hodie", que significa "hoy". Por esa cualidad para no retrasar su decisión se lo consideró luego el patrono de las causas urgentes.
Este año la veneración al santo deberá ser dentro de cada hogar Crédito: Facebook Santuario de San Expedito
Las representaciones del santo
Hoy, en la mayor parte de las representaciones, se lo ve con una cruz en su mano derecha elevada a la altura de su cabeza que dice "hodie", mientras que, debajo de sus pies, aplastado y vencido, se lo ve al cuervo con un mensaje que dice "cras".
El ropaje del santo es, todavía, el de un soldado romano. En algunos casos, lleva con él una hoja de palma que expresa su martirio.
Expedito también es considerado protector de jóvenes, estudiantes y enfermos ,y si bien no figura en el Martirologio Romano -que registra todos los santos oficiales de la Iglesia Católica-, su figura y devoción crecen año a año y es uno de los santos más convocantes dentro del catolicismo.
De hecho, en la ciudad de Buenos Aires, la cantidad de gente convocada cada 19 de abril es sólo superada por las personas que cada 7 de agosto visitan la Iglesia de San Cayetano, en Liniers.
La oración a San Expedito
Soberano San Expedito,
El socorrista por excelencia de las causas justas y urgentes,
Intercede en mi nombre frente al Dios padre todopoderoso,
para que me auxilie en estos momentos de desesperación
y angustia solemne.
Soberano San Expedito,
tú que eres el guerrero santo, el fiel servidor de Dios.
Tú que eres el Santo de los afligidos,
El Santo de los casos urgentes;
dame de tu protección, auxíliame,
dame de tus virtudes y fortaléceme con
coraje, valentía, calma, serenidad y fuerza.
Atiende mi suplica
(Realiza tu petición con fe).
Soberano San Expedito,
ayúdame a superar estas complicadas circunstancias.
Cuídame de toda amenaza, de todo peligro,
de personas y espíritus que busquen dañarme,
cuida a mi familia, amigos y hermanos.
Atiende mi suplica prontamente.
Trae a mi ser y mi hogar nuevamente la paz,
que un día nos dio tranquilidad para vivir.
¡Soberano San Expedito!
Te doy gracias eternamente, siempre te alabaré
y esparciré tu nombre entre todos los que desean alguien como tú,
un santo que oiga y atienda con urgencia.
Amén.
Fuente:https://www.lanacion.com.ar/sociedad/san-expedito-quien-fue-fieles-celebran-oracion-nid2355805
Mental Age Test - What Is Your Mental Age?
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Mental Age Test - What Is Your Mental Age?
Personality Test
•May 9, 2017
Mister Test
Personality Test: What is your mental age? A new mental age test! What is your real age? How mature are you quiz - Take this fun personality test - quiz to have a better idea about it!
Motion Graphics were provided by http://www.youtubestock.com.
Enjoy and thank you for watching!
Mister Test
Source:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEZ3GRGvozg
Mental Age Test - What Is Your Mental Age?
Personality Test
•May 9, 2017
Mister Test
Personality Test: What is your mental age? A new mental age test! What is your real age? How mature are you quiz - Take this fun personality test - quiz to have a better idea about it!
Motion Graphics were provided by http://www.youtubestock.com.
Enjoy and thank you for watching!
Mister Test
Source:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEZ3GRGvozg
PSYCH-42 Amazing Psychological facts on love
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
42 Amazing Psychological facts on love
•Apr 11, 2019
wisemind
This is a video on psychological facts on love.
Music Credit - Disquiet (Incompetech)
Source:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxQbM9cYnXw
42 Amazing Psychological facts on love
•Apr 11, 2019
wisemind
This is a video on psychological facts on love.
Music Credit - Disquiet (Incompetech)
Source:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxQbM9cYnXw
R322-S106-PSYCH-How Your Childhood Affects Your Love Styles
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
How Your Childhood Affects Your Love Styles
•Oct 26, 2018
Psych2Go
Our childhood, how we were brought up, our relationships with our caregivers play a big impact on our love styles. Whether you are the pleaser, the victim or the controller, your upbringing is largely responsible for that. Watch this video to see how your childhood might have affected who you are.
6 Types of Childhood Abuse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRkKP...
What is Love?
https://youtube.com/video/VVGZLuMpVnM/
Our Articles:
https://psych2go.net/dr-milan-kay-yer...
https://psych2go.net/the-4-attachment...
https://psych2go.net/dr-helen-fishers...
References:
Yerkovich, M., & Yerkovich, K. (2017). How We Love. Retrieved September 28, 201
Check out:
Clascity - A Knowledge-Sharing Platform to teach and learn everything
https://clascity.com/
We're also partnered with BetterHelp, where you could get online counselling at an affordable rate. You must be 18+ :
http://betterhelp.com/Psych2Go
http://betterhelp.com/Psych2Go
Source:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZj176ZoM4Y
How Your Childhood Affects Your Love Styles
•Oct 26, 2018
Psych2Go
Our childhood, how we were brought up, our relationships with our caregivers play a big impact on our love styles. Whether you are the pleaser, the victim or the controller, your upbringing is largely responsible for that. Watch this video to see how your childhood might have affected who you are.
6 Types of Childhood Abuse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRkKP...
What is Love?
https://youtube.com/video/VVGZLuMpVnM/
Our Articles:
https://psych2go.net/dr-milan-kay-yer...
https://psych2go.net/the-4-attachment...
https://psych2go.net/dr-helen-fishers...
References:
Yerkovich, M., & Yerkovich, K. (2017). How We Love. Retrieved September 28, 201
Check out:
Clascity - A Knowledge-Sharing Platform to teach and learn everything
https://clascity.com/
We're also partnered with BetterHelp, where you could get online counselling at an affordable rate. You must be 18+ :
http://betterhelp.com/Psych2Go
http://betterhelp.com/Psych2Go
Source:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZj176ZoM4Y
R322-S106-PSYCH-The Attachment Theory: How Childhood Affects Life
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
The Attachment Theory: How Childhood Affects Life
•May 31, 2018
Sprouts
The attachment theory argues that a strong emotional and physical bond to one primary caregiver in our first years of life is critical to our development. If our bonding is strong and we are securely attached, then we feel safe to explore the world. If our bond is weak, we feel insecurely attached. We are afraid to leave or explore a rather scary-looking world. Because we are not sure if we can return. Often we then don't understand our own feelings.
Dealing with Attachment Issues:
Dealing with Attachment Issues is no easy task. For those who feel like they can’t help themselves, or can’t find trust through their partners of family, we recommend looking for professional support through a therapy.
If you are able to form a secure attachment to a therapist, he can become the one who provides you with that secure base.
Here three of possible therapies:
1. Psychoanalysis. The aim of psychoanalysis therapy is to release repressed emotions and experiences, i.e., make the unconscious conscious. In order to do that, the therapist might try to bring back some childhood memories, to work at the root cause of the problem.
2. Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT). CBT is a psycho-social intervention that is widely used for improving mental health. Instead of trying to bring you back in time, it aims to explain to you what's going on inside your brain and how to cope with irrational feelings or fears.
3. The Hoffmann Process. This 7-8 day's guided process, designed by the American psychologist Hoffmann, brings participants back into their childhood to reconnect with their parents at the time when an attachment is formed. It's very intensive.
Transcript:
Attachment Theory
The attachment theory argues that a strong emotional and physical bond to one primary caregiver in our first years of life, is critical to our development. If our bonding is strong and we are securely attached, then we feel safe to explore the world. We know there is always that safe base, to which we can return to anytime. If our bond is weak, we feel insecurely attached. We are afraid to leave or explore a rather scary-looking world. Because we are not sure if we can return.
People who are securely attached are said to have greater trust, can connect to others and as a result are more successful in life. Insecurely attached people tend to mistrust others, lack social skills and have problems forming relationships. There is one type of secure attachment and there are 3 types of insecure attachments: Anxious/Ambivalent , Anxious/Avoidant and Anxious/Disorganized. In responses to distress, the first 3 react organized, while the last acts disorganized.
To understand the theory better, let's look at Mr and Ms Smith, who have 4 children. Luka, Ann , Joe and Amy. The Smiths are lovely parents, who cuddle, make frequent eye contact, speak warm, and are always there for their kids. But one day Mr Smith falls very sick and dies. For Mrs Smith life now becomes very difficult. She spend all day working, while at the same time trying to care for her children. And impossible task.
At 6 years of age, Luka’s brain is for the most part developed, his character strong and his world view shaped. The new situation does not affect him much - he knows there still is always mom - his safe-haven. He feels securely attached. Later he turns into a trusting and optimistic young man. His self image is positive.
Ann, who is 3, has problems coping with the new lack of attention. To Ann, her mother now acts unpredictable. She is anxious about their relationship, and as a result becomes clingy. To get her mom’s attention, she has to raise her emotional state and scream. When her mom finally reacts with a predictable response, she herself acts ambivalent and doesn't show her true feelings. Later in life, others think Ann is unpredictable or moody. Her self image is less positive. Her attachment style Anxious Ambivalent.
2-year old Joe, spends his days with his uncle, who loves him, but thinks that a good education means being strict. If little Joe shows too much emotions or is too loud, his Uncle gets angry and sometimes punitive. This scares Joe. He learns that to avoid fear, he has to avoid showing his feelings - also in other situations. As an adult he continues this strategy and has problems to enter relationships. His image of himself is rather negative. His attachment is: Anxious Avoidant
Amy, who is just one year old, gets sent to a nursery. The staff there is poorly trained, overworked and often very stressed. Some are outright abusive. Amy therefore becomes anxious of the very people she seeks security from - a conflict which totally disorganizes her ideas about love and safety. As she is experiencing fear without resolution, she tries to avoid all social situations. As an adult she thinks of herself as unworthy of love. Her self image is very negative . He attachment is anxious disorganized
Our attachment is formed in the very first years of our lives, a time when we are too young to communicate our anxiety and as a result can experience high levels of stress. Then our adrenal gland - an organ sitting on top of our kidneys - produces the stress-hormones adrenaline and cortisol. The heart rate increases, the blood pressure goes up and we become alert. If that happens frequently, it is called toxic stress. Toxic, because it impairs the development of a child's brain, and weakens the immune system. In embryos or at a very young age, toxic stress can even switch the expressions of genes, which can affect our health many decades later.
By simulating a Strange Situation, we can assess an attachment style, already by the age of one. To do this, we let the child play with their mothers for a few minutes inside a room. Then the child is left alone. The key moment is the child's reaction when her mother returns. Securely attached children first usually hug their mother, then can calm down and eventually get back to playing. Insecurely attached children can be ambivalent and avoidant. Some can't stop crying or refuse to continue playing.
The long term effects of our attachment in the early years, are well documented. Using the theory, researchers at Minnesota University were able to predict already at age 3, if a child would dropout of high school with 77% accuracy. In another study, undergraduates at Harvard were asked to assess how close they felt to their parents. 35 years later they were ask about their health. 91% of those who said they had a rather broken relationship with their mother, were also diagnosed with health issues, including coronary artery disease, hypertension, and alcoholism. For those that had reported a warm relationship, the figure of poor health diagnosis was just 45%.
But there is another reason why the early years deserve special attention. They are the starting place for subsequent behaviors. A kid that feels securely attached at age 2, can make friends at kindergarten. Their worldview gets reinforced with every interaction and they develop optimism. As a result they make good relationships at school, then at colleague and later at work. Highly insecurely attached children can miss out on this opportunity.
Psychologist John Bowlby, a pioneer in attachment theory, allegedly said, “What cannot be communicated to the mother, cannot be communicated to the self.” In other words: those who feel insecurely attached, might not quite understand themselves. To get to know who they are and what they feel, they might have to go way back in time.
Sources:
Harvard Study
https://arizona.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/feelings-of-parental-caring-predict-health-status-in-midlife-a-35
Minnesota Study
Researchers at Minnesota University were able to predict by age 3, whether a child would out of high school was predicted with 77% accuracy
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2857405/
Jimerson, Egeland, Sroufe, & Carlson, 2000
Attachment Theory
https://www.psychologistworld.com/developmental/attachment-theory
Parental Caring Predicting Health Outcome
https://arizona.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/feelings-of-parental-caring-predict-health-status-in-midlife-a-35
Further Readings:
In our study, these attachment assessments were robustly related to later aspects of individual characteristics, such as dependence/independence, self-esteem, self-management and school achievement, and are consistent predictors of later social relationships, from engaging preschool play partners, to forming close friendships in middle childhood, negotiating the complexities of the mix-gender adolescent peer group, and dealing with the intimacy of adult romantic relationships (Sroufe et al., 2005b). When based on comprehensive, observational data, the linkages were at times quite strong (e.g., correlations of .50).
At times, these linkages demonstrate complex, heterotypic continuity, as when avoidant attachment in infancy predicts greater dependence on teachers and counselors in preschool and middle childhood (Sroufe, 1983 Urban et al., 1991), in accord with Bowlby’s (1973) theory. Thus, rather than concluding that dependency is unstable, as was done in the Fels report (Kagan & Moss, 1962), there is strong continuity from failure to form an effective attachment in infancy and dependency later.
At other times the findings illustrate the unique features of particular developmental issues. For example, our infant attachment measures predicted certain adolescent peer outcomes as strong or more strongly than they predicted to middle childhood. The links were especially notable for certain emotional features of relationships, such as the capacity to experience vulnerable feelings (Sroufe, Egeland, & Carlson, 1999). We interpret this in terms of the salience of core issues of emotional closeness and trust in both infancy and adolescence.
Finally, at times predictions from infant attachment were uniquely strong. Disorganized attachment in infancy, the most anomalous attachment pattern, was related to numerous indicators of psychopathology in adolescence and adulthood, often beyond any other measure in the first years of life (with correlations in the .40 range; Carlson, 1998). Disorganized attachment has been proposed and confirmed to be predicted by frightening parental behavior (Abrams, Rifkin, & Hesse, 2006; Main & Hesse, 1990; Jacobvitz, Hazen, & Riggs, 1997; Schuengel, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & van IJzendoorn, 1999). When the parent is simultaneously the source of fear and the available “haven of safety” the infant faces an impossible dilemma that can only be resolved by segregating experience and by a collapse of behavioral organization. Liotti (1992) reasoned that these were micro-dissociative experiences, serving as a prototype for later dissociation. As predicted, it was related in our data to dissociative symptoms at multiple time points (Carlson, 1998). Likewise, in our study we found that infant disorganized attachment was an early predictor of young adult self-injurious behavior (Yates, 2005). We now find that disorganized attachment is related to adult borderline personality disorder symptoms more generally (Carlson, Egeland, & Sroufe, 2009).
Consider first, for example, the association between attachment relationship variation in infancy and later school achievement or dropping out of school. As with other associations, both of these outcomes were stronger when the predictor was the early care composite. By age 3 years dropping out of high school was predicted with 77% accuracy (Jimerson, Egeland, Sroufe, & Carlson, 2000).
Source:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjOowWxOXCg/https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v82PcEvf_G2iolc5ejPY5dQ2RtqU1Vj9V5L_iIKWUhk/edit
The Attachment Theory: How Childhood Affects Life
•May 31, 2018
Sprouts
The attachment theory argues that a strong emotional and physical bond to one primary caregiver in our first years of life is critical to our development. If our bonding is strong and we are securely attached, then we feel safe to explore the world. If our bond is weak, we feel insecurely attached. We are afraid to leave or explore a rather scary-looking world. Because we are not sure if we can return. Often we then don't understand our own feelings.
Dealing with Attachment Issues:
Dealing with Attachment Issues is no easy task. For those who feel like they can’t help themselves, or can’t find trust through their partners of family, we recommend looking for professional support through a therapy.
If you are able to form a secure attachment to a therapist, he can become the one who provides you with that secure base.
Here three of possible therapies:
1. Psychoanalysis. The aim of psychoanalysis therapy is to release repressed emotions and experiences, i.e., make the unconscious conscious. In order to do that, the therapist might try to bring back some childhood memories, to work at the root cause of the problem.
2. Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT). CBT is a psycho-social intervention that is widely used for improving mental health. Instead of trying to bring you back in time, it aims to explain to you what's going on inside your brain and how to cope with irrational feelings or fears.
3. The Hoffmann Process. This 7-8 day's guided process, designed by the American psychologist Hoffmann, brings participants back into their childhood to reconnect with their parents at the time when an attachment is formed. It's very intensive.
Transcript:
Attachment Theory
The attachment theory argues that a strong emotional and physical bond to one primary caregiver in our first years of life, is critical to our development. If our bonding is strong and we are securely attached, then we feel safe to explore the world. We know there is always that safe base, to which we can return to anytime. If our bond is weak, we feel insecurely attached. We are afraid to leave or explore a rather scary-looking world. Because we are not sure if we can return.
People who are securely attached are said to have greater trust, can connect to others and as a result are more successful in life. Insecurely attached people tend to mistrust others, lack social skills and have problems forming relationships. There is one type of secure attachment and there are 3 types of insecure attachments: Anxious/Ambivalent , Anxious/Avoidant and Anxious/Disorganized. In responses to distress, the first 3 react organized, while the last acts disorganized.
To understand the theory better, let's look at Mr and Ms Smith, who have 4 children. Luka, Ann , Joe and Amy. The Smiths are lovely parents, who cuddle, make frequent eye contact, speak warm, and are always there for their kids. But one day Mr Smith falls very sick and dies. For Mrs Smith life now becomes very difficult. She spend all day working, while at the same time trying to care for her children. And impossible task.
At 6 years of age, Luka’s brain is for the most part developed, his character strong and his world view shaped. The new situation does not affect him much - he knows there still is always mom - his safe-haven. He feels securely attached. Later he turns into a trusting and optimistic young man. His self image is positive.
Ann, who is 3, has problems coping with the new lack of attention. To Ann, her mother now acts unpredictable. She is anxious about their relationship, and as a result becomes clingy. To get her mom’s attention, she has to raise her emotional state and scream. When her mom finally reacts with a predictable response, she herself acts ambivalent and doesn't show her true feelings. Later in life, others think Ann is unpredictable or moody. Her self image is less positive. Her attachment style Anxious Ambivalent.
2-year old Joe, spends his days with his uncle, who loves him, but thinks that a good education means being strict. If little Joe shows too much emotions or is too loud, his Uncle gets angry and sometimes punitive. This scares Joe. He learns that to avoid fear, he has to avoid showing his feelings - also in other situations. As an adult he continues this strategy and has problems to enter relationships. His image of himself is rather negative. His attachment is: Anxious Avoidant
Amy, who is just one year old, gets sent to a nursery. The staff there is poorly trained, overworked and often very stressed. Some are outright abusive. Amy therefore becomes anxious of the very people she seeks security from - a conflict which totally disorganizes her ideas about love and safety. As she is experiencing fear without resolution, she tries to avoid all social situations. As an adult she thinks of herself as unworthy of love. Her self image is very negative . He attachment is anxious disorganized
Our attachment is formed in the very first years of our lives, a time when we are too young to communicate our anxiety and as a result can experience high levels of stress. Then our adrenal gland - an organ sitting on top of our kidneys - produces the stress-hormones adrenaline and cortisol. The heart rate increases, the blood pressure goes up and we become alert. If that happens frequently, it is called toxic stress. Toxic, because it impairs the development of a child's brain, and weakens the immune system. In embryos or at a very young age, toxic stress can even switch the expressions of genes, which can affect our health many decades later.
By simulating a Strange Situation, we can assess an attachment style, already by the age of one. To do this, we let the child play with their mothers for a few minutes inside a room. Then the child is left alone. The key moment is the child's reaction when her mother returns. Securely attached children first usually hug their mother, then can calm down and eventually get back to playing. Insecurely attached children can be ambivalent and avoidant. Some can't stop crying or refuse to continue playing.
The long term effects of our attachment in the early years, are well documented. Using the theory, researchers at Minnesota University were able to predict already at age 3, if a child would dropout of high school with 77% accuracy. In another study, undergraduates at Harvard were asked to assess how close they felt to their parents. 35 years later they were ask about their health. 91% of those who said they had a rather broken relationship with their mother, were also diagnosed with health issues, including coronary artery disease, hypertension, and alcoholism. For those that had reported a warm relationship, the figure of poor health diagnosis was just 45%.
But there is another reason why the early years deserve special attention. They are the starting place for subsequent behaviors. A kid that feels securely attached at age 2, can make friends at kindergarten. Their worldview gets reinforced with every interaction and they develop optimism. As a result they make good relationships at school, then at colleague and later at work. Highly insecurely attached children can miss out on this opportunity.
Psychologist John Bowlby, a pioneer in attachment theory, allegedly said, “What cannot be communicated to the mother, cannot be communicated to the self.” In other words: those who feel insecurely attached, might not quite understand themselves. To get to know who they are and what they feel, they might have to go way back in time.
Sources:
Harvard Study
https://arizona.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/feelings-of-parental-caring-predict-health-status-in-midlife-a-35
Minnesota Study
Researchers at Minnesota University were able to predict by age 3, whether a child would out of high school was predicted with 77% accuracy
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2857405/
Jimerson, Egeland, Sroufe, & Carlson, 2000
Attachment Theory
https://www.psychologistworld.com/developmental/attachment-theory
Parental Caring Predicting Health Outcome
https://arizona.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/feelings-of-parental-caring-predict-health-status-in-midlife-a-35
Further Readings:
In our study, these attachment assessments were robustly related to later aspects of individual characteristics, such as dependence/independence, self-esteem, self-management and school achievement, and are consistent predictors of later social relationships, from engaging preschool play partners, to forming close friendships in middle childhood, negotiating the complexities of the mix-gender adolescent peer group, and dealing with the intimacy of adult romantic relationships (Sroufe et al., 2005b). When based on comprehensive, observational data, the linkages were at times quite strong (e.g., correlations of .50).
At times, these linkages demonstrate complex, heterotypic continuity, as when avoidant attachment in infancy predicts greater dependence on teachers and counselors in preschool and middle childhood (Sroufe, 1983 Urban et al., 1991), in accord with Bowlby’s (1973) theory. Thus, rather than concluding that dependency is unstable, as was done in the Fels report (Kagan & Moss, 1962), there is strong continuity from failure to form an effective attachment in infancy and dependency later.
At other times the findings illustrate the unique features of particular developmental issues. For example, our infant attachment measures predicted certain adolescent peer outcomes as strong or more strongly than they predicted to middle childhood. The links were especially notable for certain emotional features of relationships, such as the capacity to experience vulnerable feelings (Sroufe, Egeland, & Carlson, 1999). We interpret this in terms of the salience of core issues of emotional closeness and trust in both infancy and adolescence.
Finally, at times predictions from infant attachment were uniquely strong. Disorganized attachment in infancy, the most anomalous attachment pattern, was related to numerous indicators of psychopathology in adolescence and adulthood, often beyond any other measure in the first years of life (with correlations in the .40 range; Carlson, 1998). Disorganized attachment has been proposed and confirmed to be predicted by frightening parental behavior (Abrams, Rifkin, & Hesse, 2006; Main & Hesse, 1990; Jacobvitz, Hazen, & Riggs, 1997; Schuengel, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & van IJzendoorn, 1999). When the parent is simultaneously the source of fear and the available “haven of safety” the infant faces an impossible dilemma that can only be resolved by segregating experience and by a collapse of behavioral organization. Liotti (1992) reasoned that these were micro-dissociative experiences, serving as a prototype for later dissociation. As predicted, it was related in our data to dissociative symptoms at multiple time points (Carlson, 1998). Likewise, in our study we found that infant disorganized attachment was an early predictor of young adult self-injurious behavior (Yates, 2005). We now find that disorganized attachment is related to adult borderline personality disorder symptoms more generally (Carlson, Egeland, & Sroufe, 2009).
Consider first, for example, the association between attachment relationship variation in infancy and later school achievement or dropping out of school. As with other associations, both of these outcomes were stronger when the predictor was the early care composite. By age 3 years dropping out of high school was predicted with 77% accuracy (Jimerson, Egeland, Sroufe, & Carlson, 2000).
Source:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjOowWxOXCg/https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v82PcEvf_G2iolc5ejPY5dQ2RtqU1Vj9V5L_iIKWUhk/edit
R322-S106-Yale University-Tom Hanks Addresses the Yale Class of 2011
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Yale University
Tom Hanks Addresses the Yale Class of 2011
•May 22, 2011
Tom Hanks, Academy Award-winning actor, writer and director, addresses the Yale College Class of 2011 during the traditional Class Day speech and offers the graduates insight and encouragement.
Category
Transcript:
Tom Hanks at Yale University (2011)
I know many of you were convinced last night at about six o’clock local time the world was going to come to an end. Just because it hasn’t doesn’t mean that it’s not nearby because my appearing today at Yale University is surely one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
Today is your day. Please, do not turn off your electronic devices. Leave your iPhone, your iPad, your Sidekicks, your Droids, your blackberries powered up, recording, photographing, texting out all that emerges from this stage over the next few minutes.
Later on today you can compare your tweets and your Facebook comments with those of others to figure out if anything memorable went down. You know what, tweet that last sentence I just said. Take this speech and set it to music and maybe insert some crazy kooky graphics. Starin' that video yourself and post on the web and if it becomes a viral sensation you’ll be equal to any cat playing with a paper bag or any set of twin toddlers talking gibberish to each other, as popular as that cute girl that sings about Fridays.
Just one of the possibilities in our brave new world, the world you now inherit whether you’d like it or not. The jig is up.
The clock has run out and the future with a capital ‘F’ now rests with all of you all because you went to Yale. You are now the anointed, the charge holders, the best and brightest. Each of you is a shining hope for our nation in the world. You are the new wizards who can finally make sense of all the delta vectors and square roots and divided by’s out there that we call the human race. The generations before you came of age took on the job and now it’s your turn.
I once had a friend, who had a rich uncle, who promised to pay for his college as long as my friend wished to stay in school. “You should stay in school as long as you can”the rich uncle said “because when you get out of college you’ve got to work every day for the rest of your life.” You all will come to understand what that rich uncle meant, just as surely as you will someday wonder where the hell you put your reading glasses and yell at your own kids to turn the damn music down.
On spring days like today, it’s traditional for us to ponder the state of the world and implore you all to help make it a better place which implies that things are somehow worse today than they were when we were sitting where you are right now.I’m not so sure the planet earth is in worse shape than it was 30, no 18, no four years ago.
That’s not to say it’s in better shape either. Refraining from waxing nostalgic and comparing our then to your now and avoiding any talk of “You kids these days with your rap and your ‘hip-hopin’ and your ‘snoopy dogg daddies with the diddy pops’, with your “fiddy” cents and your quarter cents…”
That sober look shows that just as world has gotten to be a better place after all, and has also grown a bit worse at the exact same rate. A one step up and one step back, sort of cosmic balance between forward progress and cultural retreat that puts mankind on the bell curve of existence. That shows a small segment in joy, ease and comfort while an equal portion struggle on with little hope in the fortunes of the remainder, either on the rise or on the wane in this confounding tide of so many damn things that we grow oblivious to the shifts in the quality of our lives.
Graduation Day is the proper occasion to put a toe in the global waters and I think the mercury shows that things are much as they always have been. Ten years ago we busied ourselves with trivial stuff imbued with importance and then came 9/11.
In 1991 riches were created in new businesses that had never existed. Then that economic balloon burst.In ’81 I had a great job on T.V. and in ’82 Bosom Buddies was cancelled. In ‘71 color T.V. in more living rooms than ever showed young Americans still fighting in combat in Vietnam and in ‘61 satellites beamed live images around the world for the very first time but those images were of the building of the Berlin Wall.
This ten-year grid shows the same yin yang thing; I’m trying to copyright that. It shows the same yin yang thing.
We all have these devices that can make a permanent record of revolutionary change on the other side of the globe as well as hate filled diatribes from across town. Fewer and fewer in our country go to bed hungry but do you see how obesity now affects half of our population?
No matter how many bargains we find at the local You-Mart many of us still struggle to pay the rent and the utilities. Our country is no longer in physical or even ideological war with our enemies, for most of the last century, but in the 11 and half years of the third millennium our armed forces have been fighting in the field for nine of them. Purchasing intellectual property and the work of artists we admire is a simple as clicking a mouse and paying less than a few bucks. Which means you may find that there is no guarantee in making a living at your chosen discipline.
Now some advantages particular to this age are not to be denied. Boredom seems to have been vanquished. There is always something to do, but hasn’t this translated into a perpetual distraction in our lives, in the bathroom, at the dinner table, in the back seat, at a wedding, at a graduation day? There’s always something to check, something to tweet, something to watch, something to download, something to share, something to buy, someone on a voice mail, something to yank at our attention span and it’s all in the palm of our hand for a small monthly service fee.
That same technology has allowed for a surplus of celebrities and that is nothing to cheer about. Anyone can enjoy the perks of notoriety now and the duration of fame has been lengthened from Andy Warhol’s brief 15 minutes to a good 15 months if you’re willing to do certain things on camera.
Though Orwellian language is often the vocabulary of official new speak his boogie man that was the all-seeing big brother has never emerged unless you live in NorthKorea or run a red light in BeverlyHills or shop online or have done something stupid in the wrong place at the wrong time in front of someone with a camera and their cell phone and that is everybody. So actually there is a big brother but he’s not a malevolent fiction; he’s actually all of us, who lives in our search engines.
So no matter how many times I do the calculations I come up with the social draw. The positives balance the negatives. The x’s equal the y’s and our hopes weigh as much as our fears but I hesitate on that last one because fear, good lord, fear is a powerful physiological force of 2011.
We here up in stands and surrounding you graduating class look to you as we do every year, hoping you will now somehow through your labors free us from what we have come to fear and we have come to fear many things. Fear has become the commodity that sells as certainly as sex.
Fear is cheap. Fear is easy. Fear gets attention. Fear is spread as fast as gossip and is just as glamorous, juicy and profitable.Fear twist facts into fictions that become indistinguishable from ignorance. Fear is a profit-churning goto with the whole market being your whole family.
I was sitting at the house one day, watching the game on T.V.not long ago and along came this promo for the local nightly news. “Are our schools poisoning our children!? That story and summer’s hottest bikinis tonight at 11:00.” In that I had school-age kids at the time I feared that they were in fact being poisoned at school and summer was still a few weeks away. So I tuned in to get the scoop and the actual news story of that news broadcast was this. A certain supply of hamburger was found to have a bit too much of a particular bacteria in it and for safety’s sake was being taken off the market. That same hamburger was slated for sale to an out of state school system for its cafeterias but it was recalled in time. So answering that news program’s own question, no our schools were not poisoning our children but yes that summer there would be some very hot bikinis at the beach.
The early American naval commander John Paul Jones said “If fear is cultivated it will become stronger. If faith is cultivated it will achieve mastery.” and this is why I’m a big fan of history because observations in the American colonies over 200 years ago by Nathan Hale, who lived in that building right over there, translate word for word of the United States in 2011, “For I take that fear to be fear in large-scale. Fear itself intimidating and constant and I take faith to be what we hold in ourselves, our American ideal of self-determination.”
Fear is whispered in our ears and shouted in our faces. Faith must be fostered by the man or woman you see every day in the mirror. The former forever snaps at our heels and delays our course. The latter can spur our boot heels to be wandering, stimulate our creativity and drive us forward. Fear or faith, which will be our master?
Three men found that they could no longer sleep because of their deep seeded fears. This is a story I’m telling. Their lives were in a state of stasis because of their constant worries. So they set out on a pilgrimage to find a wiseman who lived high in the mountain, so high up above the tree line that no vegetation grew, no animals lived, not even insects could be found so high up in the mountains in that thin air. When they reached his cave the first of the three said “Help me Wiseman for my fear has crippled me.” “What is your fear?” asked the Wiseman. “I fear death.” said the pilgrim. “I wonder when it is going to come for me.” “Death” said the wise men “let me take away this fear my friend. Death will not come to call until you are ready for its embrace. Know that and your fear will go away.” This calmed that pilgrim’s mind and he feared death no longer.
The Wiseman then turned to the second pilgrim and said “What is it you fear my friend?” “I fear my new neighbors.” said the second pilgrim.“They are strangers who observe holy days different than mine. They have way too many kids. They play music that sounds like noise.” “Strangers” said the Wiseman, “I will take away this fear my friend. Return to your home and make a cake for your new neighbors. Bring toys to their children. Join them in their songs and learn their ways and you will become familiar with these neighbors and your fear will go away.” When the second man saw the wisdom in the simple instructions he knew he would no longer fear the family who were his neighbors.
There in the cave so high in the mountains that nothing could live, the Wiseman turned to the last pilgrim and asked of his fear. “Oh Wiseman, I fear spiders. WhenI try to sleep at night I imagine spiders dropping from the ceiling and crawling upon my flesh and I cannot rest.” “Spiders” said the Wiseman, “no shit why do you think I live way up here.”
Fear will get the worst of the best of us and peddlers of influence count on that. Throughout our nation’s constant struggle to create a more perfect union, establish justice and assure our domestic tranquility, we battle fear from outside our borders, from within our own hearts every day of our history. Our nation came to be despite fear of retribution for treason from a kingdom across the sea. America was made strong and diverse because here people could live free from the fears that made up their daily lives in whatever land they called the old country.
Our history books tell of the conflicts taken up to free people from fear, those kept in slavery in our own states and deliberate whole nations under the rule of tyrants and theologies rooted in fear.
The American cause, at its best, has been the cultivation of a faith that declares we will all live in peace when we are all free to worship as we choose, when we are free to express our hearts and when we all seek a place free from fear but we live in the world where too many of us are too ready to believe in things that do not exist, conspiracies. Divisions are constructed, the differences between us are not celebrated for making us stronger but are calculated and programed to set us against each other.
Our faith is tested by unpredictable providence and threatened when common sense is corrupted by specific interests speaking from 54 years of experience the work towards a more perfect union isa never ending concern. It involves each and every one of us. Evidence that our nation is becoming a better place is everywhere but each new day fear is, as the Jersey poet said, “Lurking in the darkness on the edge of town.”
Your rising from bed every morning will give fear it’s chance to grow stronger just as it will afford faith its chance to blossom. You will make the choice to react to one or create the other and because you are smart enough to earn your place on this college day at Yale University you will sense the moment and you will know what to do.
In the meantime ponder this front. In the struggle against ceaseless fear and its ceaseless flow, in the coming months and years veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will finally come home for good after so many tours. Some after many tours that wore the body and the soul and spilled a great portion of their lives. For all of them, after a long time spent far away in the harsh realm of war, they’ve returned different from what they were when they left. Surely their faith in themselves is shadowed by a fear of not knowing what is expected of them next.
No matter what your view of those wars over there you can affect the future of our nation right here by taking their fears head on. You can imprint the very next pages of the history of our troubled world by reinforcing the faith of those returning veterans, allowing them to rest, aiding in their recovery, if possible their complete recovery.
So let those of us who watched and debated their long deployments serve them now as they served when they were asked and as they were ordered. Let’s provide for them their place free from fear by educating them if they can learn, by employing them as they transition from soldier back to citizen and by empathizing with the new journey they’re starting even though we will never fully understand the journey they just completed. We all will define the true nature of our American identity, not by the parades and the welcome home parties but how we match their time in the service with service of our own.
Give it four years, as many years as you’ve spent here at Yale. In acts both proactive and spontaneous and do the things you can to free veterans from the new uncertainty that awaits them, from the mysterious fears they will face the day after they come home. Cultivate in them the faith to carry on and they will do the rest.
Your work begins, work that will not be always joyful to you, labor that may not always fulfill you and days that will seem like one damn thing after the other.
It’s true you will now work every day for the rest of your lives, that full-time job, your career as human beings and as Americans and as graduates of Yale is to stand on the fulcrum between fear and faith, fear at your back, faith in front of you.
Which way will you lean? Which way will you move? Move forward, ever forward and tweet out a picture of the results. It may make you famous.
Thank you and congratulations.
Source:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baIlinqoExQ/https://whatrocks.github.io/commencement-db/2011-tom-hanks-yale-university/
Yale University
Tom Hanks Addresses the Yale Class of 2011
•May 22, 2011
Tom Hanks, Academy Award-winning actor, writer and director, addresses the Yale College Class of 2011 during the traditional Class Day speech and offers the graduates insight and encouragement.
Category
Transcript:
Tom Hanks at Yale University (2011)
I know many of you were convinced last night at about six o’clock local time the world was going to come to an end. Just because it hasn’t doesn’t mean that it’s not nearby because my appearing today at Yale University is surely one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
Today is your day. Please, do not turn off your electronic devices. Leave your iPhone, your iPad, your Sidekicks, your Droids, your blackberries powered up, recording, photographing, texting out all that emerges from this stage over the next few minutes.
Later on today you can compare your tweets and your Facebook comments with those of others to figure out if anything memorable went down. You know what, tweet that last sentence I just said. Take this speech and set it to music and maybe insert some crazy kooky graphics. Starin' that video yourself and post on the web and if it becomes a viral sensation you’ll be equal to any cat playing with a paper bag or any set of twin toddlers talking gibberish to each other, as popular as that cute girl that sings about Fridays.
Just one of the possibilities in our brave new world, the world you now inherit whether you’d like it or not. The jig is up.
The clock has run out and the future with a capital ‘F’ now rests with all of you all because you went to Yale. You are now the anointed, the charge holders, the best and brightest. Each of you is a shining hope for our nation in the world. You are the new wizards who can finally make sense of all the delta vectors and square roots and divided by’s out there that we call the human race. The generations before you came of age took on the job and now it’s your turn.
I once had a friend, who had a rich uncle, who promised to pay for his college as long as my friend wished to stay in school. “You should stay in school as long as you can”the rich uncle said “because when you get out of college you’ve got to work every day for the rest of your life.” You all will come to understand what that rich uncle meant, just as surely as you will someday wonder where the hell you put your reading glasses and yell at your own kids to turn the damn music down.
On spring days like today, it’s traditional for us to ponder the state of the world and implore you all to help make it a better place which implies that things are somehow worse today than they were when we were sitting where you are right now.I’m not so sure the planet earth is in worse shape than it was 30, no 18, no four years ago.
That’s not to say it’s in better shape either. Refraining from waxing nostalgic and comparing our then to your now and avoiding any talk of “You kids these days with your rap and your ‘hip-hopin’ and your ‘snoopy dogg daddies with the diddy pops’, with your “fiddy” cents and your quarter cents…”
That sober look shows that just as world has gotten to be a better place after all, and has also grown a bit worse at the exact same rate. A one step up and one step back, sort of cosmic balance between forward progress and cultural retreat that puts mankind on the bell curve of existence. That shows a small segment in joy, ease and comfort while an equal portion struggle on with little hope in the fortunes of the remainder, either on the rise or on the wane in this confounding tide of so many damn things that we grow oblivious to the shifts in the quality of our lives.
Graduation Day is the proper occasion to put a toe in the global waters and I think the mercury shows that things are much as they always have been. Ten years ago we busied ourselves with trivial stuff imbued with importance and then came 9/11.
In 1991 riches were created in new businesses that had never existed. Then that economic balloon burst.In ’81 I had a great job on T.V. and in ’82 Bosom Buddies was cancelled. In ‘71 color T.V. in more living rooms than ever showed young Americans still fighting in combat in Vietnam and in ‘61 satellites beamed live images around the world for the very first time but those images were of the building of the Berlin Wall.
This ten-year grid shows the same yin yang thing; I’m trying to copyright that. It shows the same yin yang thing.
We all have these devices that can make a permanent record of revolutionary change on the other side of the globe as well as hate filled diatribes from across town. Fewer and fewer in our country go to bed hungry but do you see how obesity now affects half of our population?
No matter how many bargains we find at the local You-Mart many of us still struggle to pay the rent and the utilities. Our country is no longer in physical or even ideological war with our enemies, for most of the last century, but in the 11 and half years of the third millennium our armed forces have been fighting in the field for nine of them. Purchasing intellectual property and the work of artists we admire is a simple as clicking a mouse and paying less than a few bucks. Which means you may find that there is no guarantee in making a living at your chosen discipline.
Now some advantages particular to this age are not to be denied. Boredom seems to have been vanquished. There is always something to do, but hasn’t this translated into a perpetual distraction in our lives, in the bathroom, at the dinner table, in the back seat, at a wedding, at a graduation day? There’s always something to check, something to tweet, something to watch, something to download, something to share, something to buy, someone on a voice mail, something to yank at our attention span and it’s all in the palm of our hand for a small monthly service fee.
That same technology has allowed for a surplus of celebrities and that is nothing to cheer about. Anyone can enjoy the perks of notoriety now and the duration of fame has been lengthened from Andy Warhol’s brief 15 minutes to a good 15 months if you’re willing to do certain things on camera.
Though Orwellian language is often the vocabulary of official new speak his boogie man that was the all-seeing big brother has never emerged unless you live in NorthKorea or run a red light in BeverlyHills or shop online or have done something stupid in the wrong place at the wrong time in front of someone with a camera and their cell phone and that is everybody. So actually there is a big brother but he’s not a malevolent fiction; he’s actually all of us, who lives in our search engines.
So no matter how many times I do the calculations I come up with the social draw. The positives balance the negatives. The x’s equal the y’s and our hopes weigh as much as our fears but I hesitate on that last one because fear, good lord, fear is a powerful physiological force of 2011.
We here up in stands and surrounding you graduating class look to you as we do every year, hoping you will now somehow through your labors free us from what we have come to fear and we have come to fear many things. Fear has become the commodity that sells as certainly as sex.
Fear is cheap. Fear is easy. Fear gets attention. Fear is spread as fast as gossip and is just as glamorous, juicy and profitable.Fear twist facts into fictions that become indistinguishable from ignorance. Fear is a profit-churning goto with the whole market being your whole family.
I was sitting at the house one day, watching the game on T.V.not long ago and along came this promo for the local nightly news. “Are our schools poisoning our children!? That story and summer’s hottest bikinis tonight at 11:00.” In that I had school-age kids at the time I feared that they were in fact being poisoned at school and summer was still a few weeks away. So I tuned in to get the scoop and the actual news story of that news broadcast was this. A certain supply of hamburger was found to have a bit too much of a particular bacteria in it and for safety’s sake was being taken off the market. That same hamburger was slated for sale to an out of state school system for its cafeterias but it was recalled in time. So answering that news program’s own question, no our schools were not poisoning our children but yes that summer there would be some very hot bikinis at the beach.
The early American naval commander John Paul Jones said “If fear is cultivated it will become stronger. If faith is cultivated it will achieve mastery.” and this is why I’m a big fan of history because observations in the American colonies over 200 years ago by Nathan Hale, who lived in that building right over there, translate word for word of the United States in 2011, “For I take that fear to be fear in large-scale. Fear itself intimidating and constant and I take faith to be what we hold in ourselves, our American ideal of self-determination.”
Fear is whispered in our ears and shouted in our faces. Faith must be fostered by the man or woman you see every day in the mirror. The former forever snaps at our heels and delays our course. The latter can spur our boot heels to be wandering, stimulate our creativity and drive us forward. Fear or faith, which will be our master?
Three men found that they could no longer sleep because of their deep seeded fears. This is a story I’m telling. Their lives were in a state of stasis because of their constant worries. So they set out on a pilgrimage to find a wiseman who lived high in the mountain, so high up above the tree line that no vegetation grew, no animals lived, not even insects could be found so high up in the mountains in that thin air. When they reached his cave the first of the three said “Help me Wiseman for my fear has crippled me.” “What is your fear?” asked the Wiseman. “I fear death.” said the pilgrim. “I wonder when it is going to come for me.” “Death” said the wise men “let me take away this fear my friend. Death will not come to call until you are ready for its embrace. Know that and your fear will go away.” This calmed that pilgrim’s mind and he feared death no longer.
The Wiseman then turned to the second pilgrim and said “What is it you fear my friend?” “I fear my new neighbors.” said the second pilgrim.“They are strangers who observe holy days different than mine. They have way too many kids. They play music that sounds like noise.” “Strangers” said the Wiseman, “I will take away this fear my friend. Return to your home and make a cake for your new neighbors. Bring toys to their children. Join them in their songs and learn their ways and you will become familiar with these neighbors and your fear will go away.” When the second man saw the wisdom in the simple instructions he knew he would no longer fear the family who were his neighbors.
There in the cave so high in the mountains that nothing could live, the Wiseman turned to the last pilgrim and asked of his fear. “Oh Wiseman, I fear spiders. WhenI try to sleep at night I imagine spiders dropping from the ceiling and crawling upon my flesh and I cannot rest.” “Spiders” said the Wiseman, “no shit why do you think I live way up here.”
Fear will get the worst of the best of us and peddlers of influence count on that. Throughout our nation’s constant struggle to create a more perfect union, establish justice and assure our domestic tranquility, we battle fear from outside our borders, from within our own hearts every day of our history. Our nation came to be despite fear of retribution for treason from a kingdom across the sea. America was made strong and diverse because here people could live free from the fears that made up their daily lives in whatever land they called the old country.
Our history books tell of the conflicts taken up to free people from fear, those kept in slavery in our own states and deliberate whole nations under the rule of tyrants and theologies rooted in fear.
The American cause, at its best, has been the cultivation of a faith that declares we will all live in peace when we are all free to worship as we choose, when we are free to express our hearts and when we all seek a place free from fear but we live in the world where too many of us are too ready to believe in things that do not exist, conspiracies. Divisions are constructed, the differences between us are not celebrated for making us stronger but are calculated and programed to set us against each other.
Our faith is tested by unpredictable providence and threatened when common sense is corrupted by specific interests speaking from 54 years of experience the work towards a more perfect union isa never ending concern. It involves each and every one of us. Evidence that our nation is becoming a better place is everywhere but each new day fear is, as the Jersey poet said, “Lurking in the darkness on the edge of town.”
Your rising from bed every morning will give fear it’s chance to grow stronger just as it will afford faith its chance to blossom. You will make the choice to react to one or create the other and because you are smart enough to earn your place on this college day at Yale University you will sense the moment and you will know what to do.
In the meantime ponder this front. In the struggle against ceaseless fear and its ceaseless flow, in the coming months and years veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will finally come home for good after so many tours. Some after many tours that wore the body and the soul and spilled a great portion of their lives. For all of them, after a long time spent far away in the harsh realm of war, they’ve returned different from what they were when they left. Surely their faith in themselves is shadowed by a fear of not knowing what is expected of them next.
No matter what your view of those wars over there you can affect the future of our nation right here by taking their fears head on. You can imprint the very next pages of the history of our troubled world by reinforcing the faith of those returning veterans, allowing them to rest, aiding in their recovery, if possible their complete recovery.
So let those of us who watched and debated their long deployments serve them now as they served when they were asked and as they were ordered. Let’s provide for them their place free from fear by educating them if they can learn, by employing them as they transition from soldier back to citizen and by empathizing with the new journey they’re starting even though we will never fully understand the journey they just completed. We all will define the true nature of our American identity, not by the parades and the welcome home parties but how we match their time in the service with service of our own.
Give it four years, as many years as you’ve spent here at Yale. In acts both proactive and spontaneous and do the things you can to free veterans from the new uncertainty that awaits them, from the mysterious fears they will face the day after they come home. Cultivate in them the faith to carry on and they will do the rest.
Your work begins, work that will not be always joyful to you, labor that may not always fulfill you and days that will seem like one damn thing after the other.
It’s true you will now work every day for the rest of your lives, that full-time job, your career as human beings and as Americans and as graduates of Yale is to stand on the fulcrum between fear and faith, fear at your back, faith in front of you.
Which way will you lean? Which way will you move? Move forward, ever forward and tweet out a picture of the results. It may make you famous.
Thank you and congratulations.
Source:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baIlinqoExQ/https://whatrocks.github.io/commencement-db/2011-tom-hanks-yale-university/
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