Saturday, October 3, 2015

Exploration five by Jessica Stafford

     The thesis of Mr. Money Mustache's "First Understand, Then Destroy Stress" is suggesting that you really try to understand your stress and what is causing it and then make small changes in your daily schedule such as setting a timer to take breaks in between working and not to make stress seem more complicated to cope with than it truly is. In this article Mr. Money Mustache discusses how he did not really encounter much stress as a child as he enjoyed the bike rides he took to work each day which helped in relieving any stress as well as having a low stress job. But he claims that he wrote this article focusing on writing tips that he would have give his younger self to deal with stressful experiences. Some of the strengths of this article include providing several resources that people could find in a library that discuss the effects of stress and how to handle stress but also including the main idea of each article to allow readers to get an overview of what each resource is about if they may be interested, as well as allowing readers to better relate to the article by consistently using a casual tone throughout and providing examples from his personal life of times when he encountered stress. Lastly, he also absorbs the reader's attention and keeps them intrigued by making humorous remarks such as, 'Oh... nice try there, stress. I know what you're trying to do. But I'm not taking your shit today.' One of the weaknesses of "First Understand, Then Destroy Stress" is that he refers to "Mustachianism" to try to strengthen his ideas but never really defines this term to the reader so the point he is trying to establish is blurry. I agree with the ideas stated in this article, I believe we need to take the time to understand where our stress is coming from and make adjustments to eliminate or reduce those stressors. Mr. Money Mustache describes how in high school he would sometimes get stressed over low grades on tests, I also used to get stressed over this same reason in high school and still continue to in college but have realized that I stressed about some tests more than I needed to as I did not take the time to relax and think about why I was actually worried. This article is very useful and can be used as a great tool for people who need tips about handling stress and also for suggesting other articles that discuss managing stress and avoiding it.
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/10/29/first-understand-then-destroy-stress/

     One of the resources that I find very useful are John Green's crash course videos that can be found at https://www.youtube.com/user/crashcourse. John Green has several videos that discuss topics such as Science to subjects like English. Each video is fairly short and use an energetic tone to keep your attention for the full length of the video but the videos give just enough information on the subject that you need and give the information, on the subject, in a different way than maybe the way your teacher taught you. These videos make a lot more sense for me on subjects I didn't quite understand when the teacher taught them to me. In high school, my Chemistry did not explain the topics we learned in class very well and I still struggled to understand even after discussing the topics with my teacher individually. But one of my friends brought John Green's videos up to me and after watching his video about the Chemistry topic I had trouble with, I understood a lot better and was able to successfully complete problems that I had struggled with in class. One of my English teachers even used to use his videos when she could tell that we were confused about what she was discussing and would use John Green's videos such as the one about "The Great Gatsby" so we could hear the information presented in a different way.
Image result for john green crash course
John Green in the typical setting of each of his videos.






2 comments:

  1. Glad someone did Crash Course! Crash Course really helped me with reviewing for finals. I love how their videos present information in a (typically) visual way.

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  2. I thought it was great that you chose an article about stress. I know stress has always been a tough thing for me to deal with so when I can learn ways to handle stress, I'm always very interested. I like that he not only focuses on one group of people that deal with stress. This article grabs the attention of younger people and older people. Stress is a big negative in humans all around the world and he takes time to write an article that will help people.

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