There is an uncomfortable and awkward feeling when you do things that are not your passion. Accompanied by these feelings is that the quality of your outputs are compromise since you don’t truly want to do it. Doing something that will not make us happy birth to unexplainable discomfort or even cognitive dissonance. The result of this is mediocrity. It’s like a trap and many of us fall in this snare.

Have you ever experienced it? I guess, I belong to the group of various people who go through this dilemma. I do not know exactly what will makes me happy. Nonetheless, I’m certain that the things I’m presently doing don’t contribute to my genuine happiness. Now, even in my academics I’m not sold-out with the stuffs I’m doing. I only did and continually doing these things because it’s a prerequisite. I did it for the sake of complying. Previously, I was so eager to study and motivated to achieve my desires. Before, I stay awake until dawn just to make sure that I study my lesson well and be prepared to take my examinations. Now, it seems that I don’t even care if my score will be high or low. Formerly, I gave my best to whatever undertakings I had and I exerted 100% effort. Presently, I often cram and settle for less.

Even with my own career path I let other people decide for me because I don’t have any decisions for myself. One of my friends encouraged me to continue medicine so I took the national medical admission test. Conversely, after taking the examination I was convinced not to pursue medicine because it is not my passion. My other friend is persuading me to try the law school, until now I haven’t decided yet. My mom wants me to work after graduation since I’m the eldest and they expect me to help them with my siblings. Perhaps, this is the most possible direction I will take but don’t have the

assurance that I’ll be happy with it. Obviously, I have a huge predicament within me. I don’t fully understand my whole being, my existence, and who I am,

Self-discovery is a process of learning who we really are and how are we similar and different from other people. One of the methods for self-discovery proposed by psychologists is the human need theory. Steven Reiss stated that Human Needs Theory purports to teach people how their personality traits arise from intrinsic motives and values. This leads me to a question: what motivates me? What is my life’s impetus? Further, as I ponder about it I realized that most of my actions are motivated by external factors and outside rewards. These extrinsic motivators are temporal and the satisfactions it gave are also fleeting. I hope that I’ll be back to what I was before – motivated by intrinsic factors, to rekindle the passion inside me. I anticipate the moment that my impetus would be intrinsic motivation. As I look back, intrinsic motivators propelled me to do stuffs just for the fun of it or because I believe it is good or right thing to do. Intrinsic motivation is far stronger motivator than extrinsic motivation.

Currently, I am finding the courage to stand up for what will truly make me happy. To be brave enough to face the challenges I will grapple with. At the end of the day, I will not know myself if I’m afraid to confront the truth. All I can say is I will be forever a learner and student of life. Everything that happens to me has a purpose and I’ll be mature enough to embrace these experiences. In my opinion, learning as well as self-discovery is a lifelong process.

Over the decades, the issue about gender is a very hot topic in society. Gender is one of the gauges of status differences. Consequently, gender inequality receives so much attention from people who are concern about social equality. Frequently, sex and gender are used interchangeably by most people but there’s a distinction about these two subjects. Sex is made biologically through chromosomes, brain structure, and hormonal differences while gender is constructed socially through social interactions. Gender identity is ones private sense of being a man or a woman, and consists primarily of the acceptance of membership in a particular group of people – male or female.

As a person, we developed our gender identity and gender roles during childhood. Cognitive Development of Kohler suggested that formation of symbolic thinking assists the acquisition of gender identity and the process of acquiring gender-appropriate behavior. According to the non-Freudian view, gender roles develop through internalization and identification during childhood. Internalization of gender norms could be seen by the example of which types of toys parents usually give to their children. Thus, “feminine” toys reinforce interaction, nurturing, and closeness; “masculine” toys often reinforce independence and competitiveness.

Up to the present generation the battle for superiority or even equality among genders is on and still continuing, I have my own doze of experiences regarding this issue. I have a male friend and we often have opposing ideas and opinions about certain matters. We even clash at times. We both don’t want to lose the argument. It may sound absurd but I think we are the human version of cats and dogs. He’s prideful and doesn’t accept his faults. Likewise, I have this thinking that nobody or no one can put me down particularly men. He values and protects his ego. The same way, I want my voice to be heard. He always tries to manipulate people especially his female friends. Nevertheless, I’m one of the exceptions because I can decode his actions and motives by merely observing him. He has machismo mentality. I support and advocate gender equality. Honestly, it’s hard to prove myself in front of our older friends and other people because we all know that Filipinos are still attached to paternity ideas. They have mindsets that men should be better than women – a kind of gender stereotyping.

I’m not a feminist neither a sexist. I’m just clamoring for fairness, equality, and justice between genders.

“Men talked of killing time, while time quietly kills them” a quote from Dion Boucicault which depicts how people utilize their time in completing tasks or achieving goals. Some may prefer doing tasks ahead of time and being assured that they will be able to finish it in a given period. In some cases, many individuals use their time recklessly and as a result, they tend to procrastinate. Benjamin Franklin once said that “you may delay, but time will not.” the phenomenon of procrastination has prevailed for much of history and continues to flourish in the modern day. A lot of people are accustom in putting off their works until the last minute but time continuously go on whether people delay a task or not.

Procrastination is not limited to working individuals in fact almost all students engage in this kind of behavior especially students in tertiary level. According to Ellis and Knaus, 80%-95% of college students admitted that they procrastinate while nearly 50% of college students chronically procrastinate (Steel, 2007). Academic procrastination is usually observable during examinations and days before the deadline of the school requirements. It is natural to procrastinate occasionally but excessive procrastination can result in many negative repercussions such as lost time, increased stress, lower grades, poorer health, decreased long-term learning, lower self-esteem and even guilt feelings for not doing a task when it should be done. In short, excessive procrastination can interfere with school and personal success. Despite of overwhelmingly negative outcomes of procrastination, still many students are doing it. This conflicting scenario lead to one question: why do people engage in an activity that is not beneficial for them? The most evident reasons why students procrastinate are perfectionism, fear of failure, confusion, task difficulty, poor motivation, difficulty in concentrating, and lack of priorities. Some students put high standard of performance for a task which doesn’t seem possible to meet that standard. A student may lack confidence and fear that he will be unable to accomplish a task successfully. Others are so concern on how to start a task or how it should be completed. Sometimes, a student may lack the skills and abilities needed to accomplish a task. Also, many students may have little or no interest in completing a task because they find it boring or without significance in their lives.

Nowadays, students have plenty of activities which caused them difficulty in setting priorities. In this technology savvy generation, several stuffs are getting the attention and time of students that’s why they have hard time in concentrating. Based on observation, almost all of the students are hooked with social networking sites like facebook which consume their time instead of doing some more relevant tasks. The computer has a wide range of activities to offer that become distractions like computer games, listening to music, watching videos on youtube and surfing the news. Television, cellphone, mp3 and other modern gadgets are some of the other distractions. A study by Quest Media showed that 95% of college students procrastinated “frequently” and “very frequently”. This study also divulge that instead of writing papers, students preferred to watch TV(23%), surf the net(17%), and sleep(13%). I am not an exception to this because I admit that I am a crammer and usually procrastinate.

As I have noticed self-esteem and self-efficacy can be linked to procrastination. Task difficulty, poor motivation and difficulty concentrating are attributed to self-efficacy. According to Bandura (1986), people with high self-efficacy respond to negative feedback with increase effort and motivation while those with low self-efficacy lessen their effort when given negative feedback. Self-efficacy beliefs determine how people feel, think, motivate themselves and behave. Consequently, self-esteem is how favorably someone evaluates and feels about one’s own self. Perfectionism and fear of failure are associated with self-esteem. People feel that their self-worth increases whenever they finish a task and they become confident of themselves. Failure serves as threat to one’s self-esteem because if a person doesn’t get the task done; it will result to low self-esteem. People are very much concern about how other people perceived them which cause them to perform tasks that are beyond their limits. I know at times I’m a people-pleaser and it upsets me whenever I disappoint people around me. Thus, it affects my self-concept and self-worth.

As a student I have a responsibility to understand why procrastination happens and be aware of the factors that lead to procrastination. I must also regulate this behavior – procrastination, because somehow procrastination has good effects yet not all the time and chronic procrastinators suffer a lot.

I’m Lovin’ it :)) How I wish Mcdonald’s Philippines serving size is like this

Who says that valentine’s day is for lovers only? Who thinks that when you don’t have a romantic partner you wouldn’t receive something special and sweet treat during valentine’s day?

Thanks to my sweet mom. She gave me a cake and a flower. :) 

Happy Valentine’s Day! :)

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. -1Corinthians 13:13

Buttered Shrimp with Broccoli. Another dish prepared by Mommy last sunday. :)

Mom’s Chili Buttered Tahong. She cooked for us last sunday. One of the rare moments because she’s always have a work even on weekends.