I can remember the night clearly. It was my freshman year in High School and a week before Spring Break, which means a ton of crammed tests from teachers all at the same time. Having good grades for the first semester, I wanted to also excel in my second semester because as a frosh I was nervous as to what kids and teachers thought about me. Anyways, the next day I had a biology and geometry test. I was so overwhelmed that no matter how much I studied there was no holding it in my head. The stress poured on minute after minute, hour after hour until finally I got my iPod and headphones out. That really only created another problem. No song was right, and it didn't help me study at all... in fact, it made it even worse! As I let my iPod shuffle song after song eventually Alan Jackson's song "It's Five O' Clock Somewhere" came on. The song alone can relieve stress, but the fact that it had reminded me that in less than a week I would be on Spring Break made everything even better. This was not the first time I had heard the song, but definitely one of the more meaningful times. It completely relieved all the stress I had. I didn't even really care about my studying anymore which was funny, because I actually had learned a lot more when I had no stress. It ended up being a pretty successful night of studying. You could say that while I was listening to the song and studying at the same time I was in a state of flow. Speaking in Piercian's terms, the sign in this experience was the song and the object was a feeling of carefree and freedom. You could also describe it as the Swahili term, "Hakuna matata."Having said that, the interpretant was my state of flow and how I could study and actually hold it in and understand it. It also created an indexical experience for me in the sense that in a week I would be on Spring Break without a worry in the world.
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