THE FEEEEEEEEEAR PROJECT

Curiosity-Surprise-Fear-Anticipation-Ignore

1. What is fear?
Fear to me is a reaction to something that is life threatening or something that reminds you of something that has scared you in the past.

2, Formulate an experiment.
What I did for this experiment is playing with a fear of my own. I have a weird deep seeded childhood fear of balloons. I've always been afraid of balloons since I was little. My brother liked to tease me about it and get really close to popping balloons in front of me. (Don't worry, I don't hold any grudges against him :) ). What I decided to do is try to get people to feel what it felt like to me when someone has a balloon. I feel okay when I hold a balloon, but when other people have one, I get scared that they will pop it. What I did is I bought some balloons and decided to pop it at random times. I wanted to first make the class curious as to why I was blowing up balloons, make the surprised when I popped it, and make them scared when I blew up another one.

3. Expected outcome.
Curiosity-Surprise-Fear-Anticipation-Ignore

4. Reaction
When I first started doing this experiment, I thought no one was reacting to it like I expected. Of course, the first time I popped the balloon, I startled some people. The next times after that, they kind of expected it and weren't as afraid (as anticipated).

5. Analysis
Like I said, I thought that it didn't have the expected outcome. But when we talked about my experiment, some people admitted to being afraid. One person had the exact outcome of what I was expecting (I think they had the same kind of fear of balloons I had). Most people, however, did not get to that state of fearing the balloons. But all the other steps happened like expected. They had curiosity of the balloon, they were surprised by the balloon, and then they anticipated what I was going to do and then they kind of ignored it.

6. Changes.
If I were to do this project again, I would work on timing. There were a lot of distractions going on in the class, and the experiment seemed to be diminished a little by all the other distractions going on. I think next time, I will try to perform the experiment with better timing.

The experiment I especially liked and had an effect on me was, I think his name was Kyle? He did the one where everyone had earplugs, looked into the lights and then closed their eyes. It was especially effective for me because I'm kind of weird about people touching my face and while this experiment was going on, I didn't know what was going to happen and I was really hoping not to be touched. I know that kind of sounds weird, but that's just what I was thinking. It impacted how I view my project in the simplicity of this experiment. Maybe you don't need to be especially over the top to get an effect.

Response to our class about fear

Yesterday, we talked about fear. I thought the discussion about the difference between fear and being uncomfortable to be interesting. I made me realize that there's not a lot I really fear, but mostly, things make me uncomforable.

I guess the two things I really fear are death and germs. They could be related. The fear of death is really death through sickness. There has been situations though where I don't fear the object, but it makes me fearful because it's dangerouts. For example, when I was a freshman in highschool, our area got hit by a tornado. Before it came, the fire alarms in our school went off and we were outside when the tordano sirens went off. Then they put us all in the gym. I was pretty scared then. If ever I'm alone and the tornado sirens go off, I do get scared. I really wish we had a basement.

I thought up a sense!!!

So, for our assignment this week, we were supposed to make up a new sense. I would like to put in a little background information first. It will make sense (ha ha) in the end:

I had a "friend" once who had a real issue with lying. She did it all the time. She would lie about the weather if she thought she could get away with it. Now, when someone I know says something to me, it is just in my personality that I will usually believe what they have to say. It's just my nature, I don't really think "oh, could this person be lying to me" or "what is this person really saying". I think this way because I don't do those things generally. When I say something, I don't usually lie and I mean what I say. I'm just a genuine person. I'm not trying to be boastful or anything, it's who I am.

So, I already kind of knew this friend lied a lot, and I could sometimes catch her lies. But she was my friend. I trusted her and would believe what she had to say. But one day, she told a lie that really hurt me. I thought back at all the things she said to me and felt really stupid, embarrassed and used for believing her. Needless to say, we aren't friends anymore. But I don't believe that there is something wrong with me. With the right people, being trusting is a good thing because people will trust me and feel comfortable with me

Lying really hurts me personally because I'm such a trusting person. That being said,  this is what I came up with:

TRUTH SENSE
It's simple, people will have the sense to not lie to others. 

But Juila, you ask, we already have the ability to do that, what's the point? Sure, we all have the ability, but we don't always use it. A sense is something that is automatic. When you touch something, you feel it and you can't un-feel it. When something is aromatic, you smell it and, sometimes regrettably, you can't un-smell it. I believe that telling the truth should work the same way. People should just always do it automatically.

Of course, like how you can plug your nose when you don't want to smell something, there should be some wiggle room with the truth sense. Like, it's okay to tell your grandma, who worked on a turkey for hours but turned up a little dry, that her cooking is delicious. Life would be a little too harsh if no one could lie EVER.

For the object I was supposed to make, I made a dripping heart. It applies to the truth sense because whenever someone lies, they hold in their hands the heart of the other person. If they lie, it could corrupt the other person's heart as well as their own.

TODAY, in SEEING SIDEWAYS

So, we are supposed to write a response to today's lecture. I have to admit,  I was really tired today, so my attention span was lacking. I don't know what my problem was, I was fine in the class before, but when I sat down in my seat for today's class, I just immediately became exhausted....I'm not saying in any way, shape or form that the class is boring, I just didn't have the energy today for some odd reason.

However, I did find the conversation about how we see things when we are walking forward to be intriguing. When we are going somewhere, we really don't always pay attention to what's happening in front of us, just where we are going or what is on our minds at the time. It's true for life as well, as we learned today. We are so stuck on the destination, we don't always pay attention to the journey. Paying attention to the journey is something I do plan on trying to get better at in the future. I'm not quite sure how to do that though. I've heard the expression before and I've never really thought about it until now and I sure haven't thought of how you do that. There are a lot of expressions out there that are said all the time, but sometimes I wish there were instructions for them too...

On one last note, I have to say something. I enjoy driving on highways. I'm sorry, but I feel the need to defend highway driving. Reason number ONE: I like driving fast. Reason number TWO: I like driving fast while listening to some rockin' music. Today's pick was Motley Crue and Poison. It pumps me up in the mornings and after a long hard day, it helps me blow off steam. I know that wasn't the point, but like I said, I felt the need to defend why I enjoy highway driving :P

Walking backwards and Zoo idea!!!

Over the past couple of weeks, I walked backwards. I felt very strange doing this and I observed a few things. First, who I was with effected how other people saw me. When I was with a couple friends, people seemed less intrigued by what I was doing, as long as my friends weren’t acting any different. I guess they thought it was just some silly thing I was doing with a couple of friends. However, if I was walking by myself, more people seemed to stare.


While I was walking backwards, I felt really silly. What I thought was really weird was how I saw the setting. I never really saw what was going on behind me (now in front of me). I had to imagine what was front of me so I wouldn’t trip or anything. What was going on behind me was still kind of insignificant. One of my friends asked me what it was like walking backwards and I said, “it’s like going back in time…because everything is behind me.”

For my location for a new technology, I choose the zoo. While I was there, I noticed that, like everything else, they try to make everything as interactive as possible. People don’t want to just see things anymore, they want to be in it completely. They want to touch, see, hear, and even smell (not that hard at the zoo) everything that is going on. You can pet sharks, feed giraffes and race cheetahs. People want the full experience. I think the texture pen would be interesting at the zoo. They could have places by the exhibits where feeling a certain animal would be interesting (and too dangerous to feel otherwise). Like you could feel what a rhino’s skin would feel like, or an elephant. I think it would be cool to have a model of the animal with the texture pen set inside it, so it would really be like zoo patrons would really be touching the animal. It could be on the inside of the model. You could use all of your senses while watching these animals.

So here is a crappy picture I made of what the exhibit would look like! Enjoy :)