The tale of different perspectives

Before I proceed to the main topic of this post, I would like to do a short recap of the events I have been through the past 2 months. Despite failing to obtain an internship..(which I kind of expected really..), it was a satisfying summer break for me as I did nearly everything I couldn't really do during the university term. From completing games, reading comics, watching anime, learning guitar songs, playing basketball.. I couldn't think of a better way for me to thoroughly enjoy and at the same time exhaust myself through this break. Although I am still rather salty for not landing myself an internship.. but hey, look at the bright side, I earned myself more time to spend with my family and friends.

Now, it has been a week since I arrived in Exeter.. and I am starting to love this place all over again. The weather, the scenery and the hills.. they bring back many memories from my first year. Almost this time last year when I first arrived in my university, I was suffering from culture shock, language barrier, accents from my local flatmates from different parts of the UK and also the lack of Malaysian companionship.. I spent most of the time trying to settle in than to enjoy the peaceful environment that my university has. Luckily, everything went great gradually and I managed to get through my first year without many problems at all.

It still feels like a dream to study here.

**

Back to the topic.

During the last two months of my summer break, I found conversations with my friends and families increasingly interesting. It's probably not what they say though, but what can I gain from what they say. I believe most people know about the importance of eye contact and body language in a conversation.. fair enough.. but I find that these are little things that people in general tend to neglect while having a casual talk.. unless in a formal surrounding. It is quite easy to see whether somebody remains focused in a conversation or not.. just by looking at their gestures and listening to what they say. Well, this is what I find anyways.. most of people I talked to, depending on the subject, will either keep eye contact throughout the conversation or constantly diverting their attention away for a few millisecond. For me, it is a sign of a great conversation. Those who are not really interested would just refuse to keep eye contact at all throughout that subject.. signalling that they are just responding out of polite and do not expect to continue on the conversation. 

This is my deduction anyways.

**

Also what I find was that some people I have met tend to only think in one direction. For example, some typical motivators might say, "you are able to succeed in something if you work hard.. like <inserts famous names>." I find it ridiculous, how about those that work hard and fail.. obviously no one is going to remember their names and I would bet with those 'motivators' the list of failures are going to be longer than those that succeeded. 

Moreover, things like "you should do this way, it is the correct way and nothing will go wrong." is also a prime example of one-directional thinking. It reminds me about the "functional fixedness" theory which I learnt in a psychology lecture - a cognitive bias that limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used. Yes, nothing will go wrong but to be fair, the other way might work as well but because of the sentence "nothing will go wrong", we tend to shun away from experimenting various options.

Obviously, this relies heavily on the situation.. if it is something major or important, we would definitely, if not, automatically choose the safe path and eliminate any forms of risk. However, casual stuffs like strategy games, cooking, even simple stuffs like how to tie a tie.. there are so many different ways to go about it.

What I am trying to say here is, do not stop, mock, jeer at someone for having a different way of tackling a same problem in comparison. It's that easy.

**

I believe we were all born with an ego.. no matter egoism or egotism. A simple simple experiment is by randomly picking up your old class photograph. If my deduction isn't wrong, the first person you are  looking in the photograph is probably none other than yourself. Yes, I believe this indicates how self-centered we are.. not in a bad way, but it shows how we care about ourselves more than anybody else. Because people want to look good in a photo, thus, they will check ourselves first before caring about how anybody else looks.

The strength of the ego is probably why various people have various difficulty levels in accepting advice from others. Self-bias thoughts and cognitive dissonance cause us to think that what we ought to do is always better than what other people suggest. However, that is just 'what we think'. A successful person, in my book, has to be able to absorb numerous advice while suppressing his/her inner thoughts and at the same time holding the urge to refute any statements.

And that is what I am striving to achieve.

**

Oh well, few more days to freshers and meeting my new flatmates.

Hopefully it will be a smooth-sailing and successful 2nd year for me, fingers crossed.

Bye,

Jayden