Habits of mind

• Curiosity – in doing the assignment of close reading, I have developed this habit. Especially during the close reading of What is Toxic Masculinity. I was attracted by the title and begin to think about what the meaning of it. Before reading, I am always curious as we are asked to think about a question first and find the answer through reading. At the beginning, I was thinking about masculinity and toxic. These two words really catches my attention. And then through reading, I realize that it describes males who are tied by the social norms and public opinions. They suppress their emotions, always being aggressive, and also seeing women as objects and belongings.

• Openness – I think I am always open-minded. Through the first three weeks, I keep this habit and develop further during our class discussions. In one of the discussion about gender roles in Beauty and the Beast (2017), I saw so many different opinions and annotations from different people. Although sometimes my classmates and I pick up the same scene to annotate, what we see and learn from the scene is always different. I respect any of the difference and love to see different insights from other people because they can broad my mind.

• Engagement – I think this class need a lot of engagement. From live zoom meeting, assignment, and discussion. If I do not engage, I will miss many important ideas and learn nothing. The ideas from other students as well as ideas from my professor, are both important for me. By doing close reading practices, online grammar practice in Connect, watching films and do annotations, listening and writing my post in discussion board, I learned how to be engaged, at any time of studying.

• Creativity – I used to show my creativity in my other works like my artworks. But I do not think I have learned to be creative so far. I do what I should do, but not doing it in novel and different ways. I think I can improve this ability by creating my artworks or trying to read same literatures in different angles.

• Persistence – I think I always have persistence. Sometimes I even hate this ability because it wastes me a lot of time on anything that is important to me. I wish I could be less persistent then I can finish everything quicker. But this ability also brings me many benefits. For instance, I never give up on the half way and always get anything done at the end. In this class, different types of assignments also strengthen this ability of mine because I learned to be patient, efficient and careful when I was doing those homework. My persistence lets me never give up when I feel tired and frustrated.

• Flexibility – I strengthened this ability by listening to other students' opinion on my weekly discussion post. They tell me many things and details that I did not realize. And I either correct them or revise them to make my topics better.

• Responsibility – I am always responsible. I give feedback honestly and effectively. And I am also responsible for my own posts and homework. I do my best to learn what I should learn and try to not let anyone around me disappointed.

• Metacognition (reflection) – I further developed this ability in writing my weekly reflection post in Wix. It is a special time when I can calm down and reflect what I have done and have learned through the past week. The fluent of mind is peaceful and the collection of knowledge is grateful. I will always do this throughout the course and after this course.

(The picture below is the movie I watched called Beauty and the Beast (2017). It is very interesting and insightful which helps me to develop habits of persistence, engagement, openness, and responsibility.)