2 FEBRUARY 2022 ONLINE/ASYNCHRONOUS POST ONE

2/1/2022

USE THIS SPACE TO POST YOUR READING JOURNAL

I've asked you to watch this TED Talk (you can access it from the syllabus or by clicking on this link here), about, essentially, how not knowing what you want to do is not such a bad thing. Please watch the entirety of this 12 minute and 17 second video. Respond in this space by posting a reading journal.

Your reading journal should:
1. Identify the thesis of the TED Talk
2. Identify what evidence the speaker provides to prove what you say is the thesis.
3. Includes some sentences about what argument this TED Talk is speaking to--either for or against. Essentially, what argument is her argument a response to (think of the first reading we did about the art of summarizing).

NOTE: Because this post is online, you only need to post 300 words rather than the usual 500.

SECOND NOTE: Because class is online and asynchronous today, you have until the start of class on Friday to complete this post. Keep in mind, however, that you do have work due on Friday and I expect it to be completed by class time. This is the third week of classes. After next week, I will no longer accept late work.

10 Comments

Lily Scola

2/1/2022 05:29:37 pm

Reading journal comment

She starts off by asking “have you ever been asked what you want to be when you grow up?” She asked how old you were when you were asked this question. She immediately goes to ask them if this has caused them anxiety if they may not know exactly what they want to do in the future. She says she couldn’t answer this herself. She liked “English, Math and Art and she had too many varieties of interest to have one set future.” She would get good at something and then get bored. She would let it go but the boredom kept creating this cycle. She kept changing and changing what she liked and it caused her anxiety. The unknown causes anxiety for people. She was anxious because she thought it was her fault for changing what she wanted to be. She says we get asked this question so many times . She talks about the limitations of only having one path and not being open to other opportunities. “She talks about how people are wired differently.” She calls them a multipotentialite.” She makes it positive instead of negative. She argues that it is okay to have more than one interest and that you can still be successful even if you don't have a set future.

“She says multipotentialite are good at learning and step out of their comfort zone.”They learn more things. She keeps mentioning the positive and good things about having more than one interest. It is good to be open minded. She mentions three important skills for success , “ Idea synthesis , Rapid learning, and adaptability.” “ But she also says if there's too much pressure it can be bad.” She wants us to learn from her speech and to be true to ourselves and follow our passions. She wants us to work the way we work and function and she doesn’t want us to change the way we function because of someone else. There are different ways of thinking and it is okay to think differently than someone else. She is bringing awareness to us that our flaws can also be a good thing and help us succeed. She knew what it was like to have multiple interests and said that was okay and she had her own personal experience to prove her success. I had a one way path and always knew I wanted to help kids when I was older because I knew what it was like to be a kid who needed some help and guidance. Why does the average age being asked this question be 3 and 5? Why do people with more interests have a more open minded thinking? I do not have multiple interests , but this ted talk does a good job on convincing people like me to look at other options. She is a positive influencer and ted talker and she is open to different ways of how people think and use their brains. She persuades people to think in many different ways about their future.

Michael Garifales

2/1/2022 11:14:03 pm

The speaker, Emma, begins her lecture by asking her audience “What do you want to be when you grow up?", and her audience gives different answers, and then asks the same question but if that question has given them anxiety. As a kid, she “didn't have any interests -- it's that I had too many. In high school, I liked English and math and art and I built websites and I played guitar in a punk band”. When she got interested in something completely unrelated to stuff she liked, she gets anxious for two reasons: “The first was that I wasn't sure how I was going to turn any of this into a career….The other reason it caused me so much anxiety was a little bit more personal”. She talks about the purpose of “multipotentialite”, which is someone who has interests in many things in life and the three superpowers of being a multipotentialite are: ideas, rapid learning, and adaptability. She also believes that is okay of having multiple interests because those interests are superpowers and those superpowers can be successful in the future, even if you don’t really have a goal, or set in mind, what your future would really be like.
What I think the thesis of this TED talk would is that you “need to choose interesting things to learn about so it can help inspire the world to do new things”. She gives a perfect example at the beginning of the TED talk by giving the audience to raise their hand about a question “What do you want to be when you grow up” and hold old they were when they decided to choose what they wanted to do. A perfect example to back up my thesis is “As a society, we have a vested interest in encouraging multipotentialites to be themselves. We have a lot of complex, multidimensional problems in the world right now, and we need creative, out-of-the-box thinkers to tackle them.” I think this is a good example because I agree with what she says because it’s really a true statement of what life is all about.

Ethan Chang

2/2/2022 12:46:37 am

During the TED Talk, Emma discusses the struggles of finding the career or interest you want to pursue throughout your lifetime. However, she stresses the idea that being unsure of what interest to choose from isn’t a bad thing. She identifies these people as, “Multipotentialites”. I believe her main argument is that even though these people may feel lost or out of place in the world, they are one of the key factors for future innovation and new concepts of the world. Emma goes over her “three superpowers” that multipotentialites have to offer. One of them being idea synthesis, stating that this “power” allows multipotentialites to combine their different fields of knowledge to create a whole new concept and idea. The second superpower she mentions is, rapid learning. Saying that because multipotentialites are always learning new hobbies and interests, they are accustomed to “starting from scratch” which gives them an upper hand at grasping new concepts easily. And the final superpower being adaptability. Mentioning how if society pressures multipotentialites to focus their time and energy on one idea, they will lose their ability to change their way of thinking. Emma steps aside from the subject of multipotentialites and acknowledges the people who do only pick one subject to pursue. She calls this group “specialists”. She notes that some of the best teams are a combination of the two, rather than one being better than the other. She later goes into detail by mentioning how a specialist can implement ideas and multipotentialites can use their knowledge to enlighten them both. I believe this argument is mainly directed towards and challenges the societal norm of only picking one subject and pouring all of our time and energy into it rather than having multiple interests. Clarifying that there is nothing wrong with either one and should be accepted as an option for everyone.

Lizzy Hart

2/2/2022 08:17:26 am

Five year old Lizzy was sure she was going to be a Baker. As we know I did not go through with the idea and didn’t make my way to culinary school. It's a bit ironic because today, my eighteen year old self, can barely cook, nevermind bake. As I got older this became my least favorite topic. Not being the smartest of the Hart bunch left me feeling insecure when school was brought up. “What do you want to do when you’re older” became my worst enemy, I had no clue. I didn’t think I was smart enough for college; I could never survive a real job. What I didn’t know was that I was a Multipotentialite.
“The notion of narrowingly focused life is highly romanticized in our culture”, Emilie Wapnick points out. When we are young we have the most opportunity to learn and grow. So why were we essentially pushed into thinking we had to be one thing? Wapnick does a great job informing the audience on the topic. She digs deep into the reality of it. Stress, anxiety, overthinking. Most of us young people get into a cycle: find something we are interested in, we give it our all, eventually we get bored of it, the interest is let go and now in the past, this brings anxiety, and then it starts all over again with a different interest.
“I worried that there was something wrong with this, and something wrong with me for being unable to stick with anything” , Emilie added. But there is nothing wrong with this. Being strong in different fields is so beneficial in the workforce; I feel as if it is overlooked. Emilie suggested this, “It is rarely a waste of time to pursue something you are drawn to even if you end up quitting. You might apply that knowledge in a different field entirely.”

Wapnick introduced me to something I had never heard of but deeply resonated with: being a Multipotentialite. This is someone with many interests and creative pursuits. I may not be a Renaissance man, but I am good at a handful of things. Why weren’t we introduced to this concept earlier? The youth is taught that they have to choose. This follows them and later on leads to no light at the end of the tunnel, so they think. Asking ‘What do you want to be’ is different than ‘What you can be’.
At the end of the day, whether you find yourself identifying as a specialist or Multipotentialite, you can be whatever you put your mind to. If we narrow our focus we will never know the outcomes we are capable of. If I went on with my five year old dream I wouldn’t be where I am today; I wouldn't change it for the world. Society needs more Multipotentialites. There is nothing wrong with being a beginner, eventually, you will be the best of the best.

2/2/2022 08:47:54 am

I can relate to Lizzy because I am not the smartest in my family either. My brother and dad are the smartest. I also didn’t think I was smart enough for college. I didn’t think I would get into any of the schools I applied to. I can relate to the stress and anxiety of my future even though I know what I want to do when I am older.I did get asked this a lot when I was young. I actually wanted to be a detective or an architect at first. But I obviously couldn’t be a detective because I am afraid of blood.

Grant Hall

2/2/2022 09:08:18 am

In the TED Talk, the speaker, Emilio Wapnick, says that multipotentialites, people who have many interests and strengths in more than one field, are not abnormal or not well suited to fit into our society, and in fact these strengths give them the ability to succeed. Like the speaker, some people have many interests and talents and for them to pick just one of those talents would not play into their strong suits. She talks about how it is normalized and romanticized in our culture to have only one job that you put all of your time and effort into. If someone asks you what job you want, it would seem abnormal for someone to say they want 20 different jobs, and that person would feel as though something was wrong with them. She is arguing against this, saying how having more than one interest can make someone able to combine these multiple interests into something that didn’t exist, and succeed far more than they would have if they only focused on one of these interests. Not everyone is going to be able to succeed by just focusing on one thing, and not everyone has the ability to focus on just one thing. Just like how Wapnick talked about how she used to find something she was very interested in, and she would get really good at it and then get bored of it and find something else she was interested in. In her concluding thoughts, she talks about the three skills that a multipotentialite has are idea synthesis, rapid learning, and adaptability. She speaks about how these skills are necessary for a multipotentialite to tackle the complex problems we face in today’s world, and how if these people listen to those who tell them to focus on solely one of their interests, they may not be able to solve them.

Gracesave Fayiah

2/2/2022 11:06:54 pm

This TED talk was over “embracing your inner wiring.” The speaker started the whole thing with the powerful question of “where you asked ‘what do you want to be when you grow up’ when you’re younger? Then also followed up with a question of being “did it bring you anxiety?” Then Emma continues to emphasize on how we as individuals go through this constant cycle/pattern of doing things that we are interested in and how much we invest in it, then it becomes boring all of a sudden, but honestly that is a true problem. This is the anxiety that is built on a personal level. It could be self sabotage, afraid of commitment, or the labeling fact that wanting to do mini things is wrong or abnormal to society and that is what we’ve been taught through culture and definition of being an adult or becoming whatever we want to do in life. Now to bring back that question they talked about how the question is asked over and over again but in different forms as we get older. For instance in high school they ask us “what our major is going to be when we go to college?” That's basically the same question but in different words. That question brings limitations and simply brings you down. It makes you think that one is called to one true calling. Then the magical word of “Multipotentialite'' is brought up. Then the three main superpowers are stated number one being idea synthesis, number two- rapid learning and they give in example Nora Dunn and her awesome muscle memory and three- adaptability. These “super powers” help with multidimensional problems that we have today and how we are in need of creative thinkers. This TED talk has to be one of the best ones I’ve watched. The breakdown of a question that I still honestly have anxiety about makes me feel better on what I really wanna do in life. Honestly I wanted to change what I wanted to be until it got to the end and she said what I actually wanted to be which actually shocked me, but it made me realize why I give up when I can do what I want to do. The speaker basically gave me a shotput of happiness when it came to going through college and visioning what life would be after it and how to utilize my time. I really want to acknowledge how Emma pushed on “nothing is wrong with you when you want more than one thing done,” but due to society they will make it seem wrong. Society gives people a view and pressures us to go with it. I also support how they talk about the self sabotage that a person can do because as a college student that is something that is seen greatly amongst us. I would also like to reaffirm that the question of what do you want to be when you grow up does symbolize limitation. I say this because when asked that question you stand there and think long, and yet most people sometimes just say what first comes to mind, without actually going over their answer.

Madi Von Ruden

2/3/2022 12:54:10 pm

In the TED Talk, “Why Some of Us Don’t Have One True Calling”, Emilie Wapnick talks about how many of us, at a young age, are asked what we want to be or do when we grow up. Most kids give a typical kid response like “an astronaut or a ballerina or a pirate”, however, this is not the case as we get older and reach a certain age where it is a more frequent question asked. As high schoolers, we think we are required to know what we want to do for the rest of our lives and it can be an overwhelming thought. That is not the case. Some of us do not know what we want to do and that is totally acceptable because people have different passions that change all the time.

Emilie brings up the word “multipotentialite”, which she describes as someone that has many passions and interests. This may seem like a bad thing when trying to figure out a career, however it is most certainly not. Having different interests and skills can help you succeed in many ways. If you bring many skills to the table, it can expand your possibilities in a certain subject. Say you know a lot about art and are very artistic. This skill can help you in many different fields and careers. It is not a bad thing if you know you want to go into a specific field of work, but it is not bad to want to change what you are interested in or bring all your interests together and create a career that incorporates all those interests. I think that many kids and young adults fear and stress that they will not find one thing that they love so they can focus on that one thing. Knowing that you do not need to narrow your options of interest takes a little bit of that fear and stress away.

Sophie Campagna

2/3/2022 07:45:34 pm

At the beginning of the TED Talk Emilie asks if anyone has been asked “What do you want to be when you grow up?”. A lot of people seemed to raise their hands at that question. She goes on to seemingly say that the question probably shouldn't be asked at such a young age, and what if you have a lot of options of what you want to be when you grow up. She then talks about how people who aren’t quite sure what they want to do, or just have so many interests are referred to as multipotentialites. Basically, what multipotentialites are, are people who have so many options that they can choose from to be their career. Anything that interests them can be considered in their career finding path. Having hobbies and somehow relating them to what you want to do for work is so amazing. She said that multipotentialites can have three kinds of superpowers: “Ideal synthesis, rapid learning, and adaptability”. They all show different ways that a multipotentialite is able to use their abilities in everyday life. Ideal synthesis is being able to use multiple things that you want to do, and make it work with the work that you think you want to do. Rapid learning is helpful to be able to constantly learn new things and to want to do that. Adaptability is being able to adapt to anything thrown your way, which is really helpful if you have multiple jobs, or need to get more than one thing done at a time. She is saying that it is important to understand that having multiple hobbies, and wanting to do them all is okay. You don’t need to have a solid plan and know exactly what you want to do in life to be successful. Do what makes you happiest.

Kerryann MacKay

2/4/2022 10:32:51 am

During the Ted Talk by Emilie Wapnick, she talks about the search for finding a career or a topic that fascinates you and the difficulty it can have. Her speech comments on the idea that being undecided about the job/interest you want isn't the worst thing. People have many skills, and you don’t always have to narrow it down to just one to make a career for yourself. She talks about how it is normalized to have just one full-time job to dedicate your time to in our culture during the talk. People would be frowned upon if they didn't narrow their job interests and take on many different positions. She says that Multipotentialites are people who have many interests and strengths in more than one field of work. Society can see these people as uncommon and unbecoming. However, these strengths give them the ability to be successful. She mentioned the three superpowers, Multipotentialites have, “Ideal synthesis, rapid learning, and adaptability.” Ideal synthesis is combining multiple things that you want to do and making it work with each other to create something new. Rapid learning is helpful in constantly learning new things. Adaptability is adapting to anything thrown your way, which can be beneficial when having multiple jobs or getting many tasks done at once. Multipotentialites can use these abilities in their everyday life. It is rare to see someone pursuing various directions, mainly because society gives people a particular focus and expects them to follow it. The main argument is that you are allowed to be different; being different is a good thing. You have to embrace who you are to have a better lifestyle. Having the ability to incorporate many interests can allow you to create your own type of career path.

2 FEBRUARY 2022 ONLINE/ASYNCHRONOUS POST ONE

USE THIS SPACE TO POST YOUR READING JOURNAL

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