Irrationality in Human Behavior

I think that irrationality is a huge element of the human experience.  Without irrationality, we are perfect, rational robots without free will.  Though we can strive to be perfectly rational, it is impossible and we end up being defined more by our irrational elements than anything else.  Many dangerous sports or activities are not the smartest idea to participate in when evaluated completely rationally, yet many people in the world play football, dive in the ocean, or ski through trees.  From a rational perspective, these activities probably have a negative expected value of gain, meaning that the amount of pleasure or enjoyment you get from doing this activity is probably small in comparison to the immense risk of injury or loss.  Yet, people including myself do these things because they are fun, and because sometimes the danger of an activity is what makes it exciting.

One personal example of how I can be irrational is the amount of time I spend on my phone.  Rationally, it would serve me better to get started on homework earlier or to do something more constructive than scroll through facebook or snapchat people strange pictures of myself.  From an outsider's perspective, these things can seem silly and stupid, and clearly irrational if my goal is to do well in school and be as efficient as possible with my time.  And yet, many people all over the world spend too much time on their phones, and this is part of what defines their, and my, existence.  Also, a simple example is procrastination.  Rationally, procrastination is stupid and I would expend the same amount of energy doing homework sooner rather than later, and be happier and less stressed out.  And yet I still procrastinate to no end.  Why?  Because I don't feel like doing homework all the time... because I would rather go on my phone now... and ultimately, because I'm human.

My Writing Evolution

I think I have definitely improved in my analytical writing since freshman year.  My greatest challenge last year was connecting my evidence and commentary back to the thesis.  This change just came through practice, and I got better quickly after realizing what was expected from an analytical essay.  I also have improved at writing good thesis statements that address the So what? question.

I need to work on being less wordy and in general being more concise and not taking many pages to express one idea.  I'm better about this when given a word limit, but when I'm free to write however much I write, I feel like I end up writing too much.  Also, I need to get better at writing quickly but retaining the same quality of writing.  When crafting a take-home essay, I can spend hours thinking about what the structure of my paragraphs will be, and each paragraph takes me about an hour to write, if I am doing my best work.  I would like to be able to write well while finishing an essay in 1-2 hours rather than taking an entire night...

When I write an essay, I basically go in order from introduction to conclusion.  First, I think about the essay question and get a general idea in my brain about what I will be arguing.  Then write the introduction except the thesis.  At that point, I brainstorm, for hours sometimes, about exactly how I want to structure my essay and what I will argue in each paragraph, and I write an outline for each paragraph.  This outline consists of my topic sentence, and a few bullet points about what I will argue and what examples could be relevant.  Then I write my thesis.  Afterwards, I jump into writing the paragraphs.  The whole time that I'm writing, I'll get ideas about a good idea, quote, or phrasing that I can include in a future paragraph, and I add it in to the outline for that paragraph.  When I think of a good phrasing for some idea I have, I don't want to forget it, so I write it down; oftentimes, I can end up getting sidetracked for a while writing about some idea for a future paragraph.  My conclusion sometimes ends up being a page long, or longer, because I have so many ideas for it while I'm writing my body paragraphs.  One unique thing about my writing style is that I don't follow the conventional process of writing a rough draft, then going through and editing.  If a sentence isn't perfect when I'm writing it, I'll sit there and keep rephrasing it until I'm satisfied.  So, I end up with my "rough" draft pretty much being my final draft.  I later read it over, mostly to delete or add sentences or rephrase further, but much of my editing is done while writing.