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One reason Congress doesn’t want to study reparations is out of fear that they don’t know what the conclusion will be; that it won’t be the answer they are looking for. This cycle of avoidance is a result of the catastrophization of those who would potentially suffer from the institution of reparations, especially the white population. David Burns defines catastrophizing “as a kind of magnification that turns ‘commonplace negative events into nightmarish monsters’” (qtd in Lukianoff and Haidt para. 25)….

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Meeting with Olivia was really helpful in making my ideas clear and concise in my Essay. In the conference, after reading my essay, we focused mostly on my first two paragraphs. In my introduction paragraph, I didn’t have a defined “perspective” sentence so we noted that I should add that to make my argument more clear. Then in my second paragraph, we talked about the best way to introduce the concept of a growth mindset in a way that effectively…

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Ellipses and Brackets: “grounding one’s beliefs in evidence rather than in emotion or desire, and learning how to search for and evaluate evidence that might contradict one’s initial hypothesis.” “Some students, she wrote, have pressured their professors to avoid teaching the subject in order to protect themselves and their classmates from potential distress.” Quote Revised: “…pressur[ing] their professors to avoid teaching [rape law] in order to protect themselves and their classmates from potential distress.” Signal Phrasing: “Some students, she wrote,…

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ORIGINAL(1) Today we live in a world divided. Partisanship in America has never been so intense and violent as we have seen through the many protests from a number of groups representing both sides of the aisle. In the past, one was not so defined by their political and social beliefs. Lukianoff and Haidt write, “Republicans and Democrats have never particularly liked each other, but survey data going back to the 1970’s show that on average, their mutual dislike used…

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(1)She gave the ten-year-old students a problem that was just a bit too hard for them and saw two different reactions from the students. From those employing a growth mindset, Dweck received a very positive response: “They said things like, ‘I love a challenge,’ or, ‘You know, I was hoping this would be informative.’ They understood that their abilities could be developed” (0:35). In the face of struggle, these kids rose to the challenge with confidence putting in their best…

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I received a lot of good feedback from my peers and I am very thankful for their help. After my first draft, one of the biggest aspects that my paper was missing was my own perspective. I wrote about Dweck’s and Lukianoff and Haidt’s points and the effect they can have on society today but I did not clarify what my perspective exactly was in relation to that point. Upon this feedback, I wrote a paragraph that discusses where I…

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In one instance, Jeanie Suk of Harvard University wrote an online article in The New Yorker about how students were “pressur[ing] their professors to avoid teaching [rape law] in order to protect themselves and their classmates from potential distress.” Avoidance is a strong example of a fixed mindset. In this quote, I added brackets so that its grammar makes sense in the context. Dweck presents this through two pictures that show electrical activity in the brain:  “on the left, you…

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Carol Dweck’s TED talk “The power of believing you can improve” and Lukianoff and Haidt’s article “The Coddling of the American Mind” have many similarities regarding how we think as humans in today’s rapidly developing society. Dweck discusses the benefits of using a “growth mindset” in school which embraces the process of a problem rather than being discouraged when you don’t get it the first time. Lukianoff and Haidt challenge the idea of restricting our speech to prevent emotional discomfort…

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Relating Dweck to Lukianoff and Haidt Dweck’s TED talk and Lukinaoff and Haidt’s article seem to all surround this idea of a “fixed mindset.” Dweck explains this term through her experience with elementary students. As an example, when facing a math problem that they cannot solve, kids who have a fixed mindset tend to instantly give up, thinking “I can’t do this and I never will!” Kids who practice using a growth mindset understand that although they cannot solve the…

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Critical Thinking Lukianoff and Haidt mention the term “critical thinking” in their article many times in relation to microaggressions and offensiveness on college campuses. To define it they write: “critical thinking requires grounding one’s beliefs in evidence rather than emotion or desire, and learning how to search for and evaluate evidence that might contradict one’s initial hypothesis.” They suggest that to think critically one should think objectively without bias; similar to using the scientific method. This is very hard for…

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