Get Organized: The Garage

      For this thought experiment, I completely cleaned and reorganized my garage. Out of all the places in my house, the garage has to be the one with the least traffic (pun totally intended). The only time that the garage is ever occupied is when we are going to and from the car. Therefore, over time, dust, leaves, and cobwebs began call the garage their home. It wasn't a small chore, so my mom told my brother to help me out.

      Before we began the process of tediously cleansing the garage, I just took a look around to see what I was about to deal with. Truth be told I was uncomfortable standing in the midst of the place. The grimy conditions had penetrated all corners of the room, and I was unsure whether I was even in my clean, comfortable house at all. I am no clean freak, but I felt the instant need to clean up that garage to the best of my ability because I did not feel comfortable knowing that a desolate spider nest lay behind my back door.
My brother and I cranked it out over the next forty minutes. Our approach was efficient and methodical. We first took brooms and swept the leaves and dust that coated the floor. It took an extra effort to completely vacate the small cracks that patterned the ground. Then, my brother hosed down what the brooms could not sweep as I began to tackle the job of cleaning the window. Our garage has a sole window that had become a suburban neighborhood of cobwebs and other insects. I took to the hose and washed the whole mess out of the garage. The hard part of the process had been completed and all that was left was to put misplaced objects where they needed to be, and my task was over. Although the work was tiresome and trivial, it felt good knowing that I was working towards a goal that would ultimately make me more comfortable in my home. When I saw the fruits of my labor, I was glad that I had invested the time into cleaning my garage.

      The mental change that I experienced was much more profound than I had anticipated. I mean, what how could doing a chore possibly benefit someone's state of mind? The truth is, I believe that any type of organization or cleaning can truly affect the cognition of a person. The physical action of cleaning anything, whether it be a garage or your own work desk, directly correlates to the state of your mind. Once I surveyed my newly spotless garage, I felt, for lack of a better term, better. My mind had obtained a clarity and satisfaction that that certain location was now clean and orderly, almost as if my mind had become clean and orderly in return. I had experienced this before when I simply organized my desk, as I seem to work at higher capacities when there aren't papers and binders strewn all over the place. In addition to this euphoric feeling, the act of cleaning anything also leads you to discover or rediscover something new about what you are cleaning. When I reorganized my garage, I came upon countless objects that I had forgotten about throughout the years: battered baseball mitts, my old skateboarding helmet, and I glow-in-the-dark basketball I had received for my eighth or ninth birthday. These objects gave me refreshing childhood memories that acted as a reward in a way of its own.

      This cleansing experiment taught me a lot about the connection between the mental and physical worlds. The brain truly behaves in certain ways that are completely dependent to the orderly nature of its physical surroundings and interactions. Clarity is paralleled in the environment and the mind, and one directly influences the other. I hope to keep this in mind for the future and use this knowledge to enhance the efficiency of myself, in both mental and physical ways.

Metacognition: Writing Poetry

      For a very long time, writing poetry had been an extremely easy process. To me, poetry was simply the creative composition of words in lines and stanzas to develop an artistic story. Therefore, the process was simple. I would first think of one story or event that I could somehow shape into a poem. Then, I would crack down on the meat of the poem itself. I dished out amazing rhymes and organized the words into neat little stanzas that made the paper seem clean and complete. And that was it; the poem would be complete in a matter of thirty-five minutes. This brief process reflects my previous beliefs regarding poetry: it was a giant waste of time. Why go through the trouble of writing a poem when there are easier ways of communicating messages and stories? However, as we began to actually study poetry in class, I realized that poetry was much more than meets the eye.

      Poetry was much more than interesting and extensive than I had previously believed. As we dissected numerous poems from various authors, I began to see the layers of thought and material that lay beyond the meanings of the words themselves. There were literary devices and methods that were present in poetry that I never knew to have existed. I began to see the use of enjambment, extended metaphors, non sequiter, juxtaposition, and even the change in tempo and rhythm of words. Once all of these techniques became available to me, I saw the need to alter my process of writing poetry.

     As we learned how identify these poetry techniques in class, I attempted to use them in my first draft of my poem. My method in writing my poem became almost formulaic, as I analyzed each poetic skill and saw if they would fit well within the realm of my poem. This was completely different than my previous spontaneous approach. I actually took note of the placement of my words, the sound that my words would make in succession, and the layers of information that I could conceal under a few stanzas of poetry. This deep analysis and execution of poetry was completely new to me. I had always believed that good poetry was born from the random spark in the mind and instinctive writing. However, I came to realize that poetry was should be tediously crafted to truly make it beautiful. 

    At first, the formulaic approach to poetry seemed counter-intuitive. I had my doubts thinking that the approach could harshly limit my creativity. However, this was not the case. I found that inputting these techniques into the poem took all the creativity in the world. Manipulating the English language by using the techniques takes an extensive reserve of creativity to accomplish. In the future, I do not intend on changing this new method in writing poetry because I find the formulaic method to be rather rewarding. When I finally completed my poem, it was satisfying to look over the work and visualize the layers of information that I constructed beneath the words. I'm thoroughly surprised by this because I never thought that writing poetry, my previous bane to my existence, could be so satisfying. I'm glad that I discovered this way of thinking because it gives me a new drive and incentive when it comes to poetry, and will definitely be helpful in many other aspects of literature as well.