Christina Kealoha
10/3/95
Psy 409
Dr. James
Assignment: Catch up with all the tasks left undone; beautify your Home Page with icons and other methods you can copy from others on the World Wide Web.
How much negative emotions did it cost you, all in all?
Very little 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Very much
This week's rating =7
How valuable for later use is this knowledge or skill going to be for
you?
Not useful 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Very useful
This week's rating =10
How likely is it that you'll be getting good at this week's tasks?
Not likely 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Very likely
This week's rating =10
How satisfied are you with the computer and Internet systems?
Not satisfied 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Very satisfied
This week's rating =10
How hard did you try to get through this week's tasks?
Gave up easily 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Refused to give up
This week's rating =10
I can't even begin to describe how nerve wracking this assignment has been for me. It's not that the actual doing was difficult, but rather, the planning to do was difficult. Maybe I made a bigger deal out of this than I should have, but to me, this week's task felt like the weight of the world on my shoulders because there was SO MUCH I wanted to accomplish and I just didn't know where to begin. I couldn't fathom doing everything that I wanted to do, so you know what I did for a large part of the week? I did nothing. Well, not nothing, I actually agonized over this! Once I got started, I had a terrific time, but the time before I started was nerve-wracking. Talk about lacunae! If Ryan is Mr. Lacunae then I'm his wife because that's how lacunae I felt. And it wasn't like I couldn't do the assignment. I knew how to get images and a background and stuff like that. That wasn't the problem at all. I just couldn't decide what to do aside from the layout of the page.
You see, I wanted to add in all these other tidbits to my page that would make my homepage MINE. I wanted it to be uniquely from me and I just didn't know how to do it. There were so many things that I wanted to do, and as you can see from my hompage now, there's so much more that needs to be done. For me, this week was A LOT of planning. I didn't even come to the computer lab until Monday because what I did was largely on paper, planning what I wanted on my page and how I wanted it to look.
Internet addict
But even with all that planning, I
can't believe how long I am capable of staying in this computer lab.
There is always more to do and I always have to DRAG myself away, either
because I have a
class, or because the computer lab is closing. I think it's insane how
addicting this computer thing is and I have to admit, it's not a pleasant
addiction for me. I don't really enjoy sitting in front of a computer for
hours on end, but I really want to get these things done and that's what drives
me and forces me to stay in the computer lab for hours on end. Granted I don't
stay nearly as long as Lori, but to me, I am putting in an awful lot of hours.
Does anybody else feel that way?
I felt that this week's task was incredibly difficult for me because I did not know where to start. I realize that this task was probably easy for the rest of the class and it was probably supposed to be easy, but I wanted so much for my homepage. I wanted perfection! And when I felt completely less than adequate in attaining perfection, I just wanted to crawl in a hole and not come out until it was all over. I actually fell into one of my personal fossilized errors, which is not something I have done in class, but rather an error that I repeatedly commit in my life. I guess I'm somewhat of a perfectionist, but when I am feeling inadequate, I just shut everything out and I don't deal with the problem. This is the error that I committed this week. I didn't deal with the problem until I absolutely was forced to (when the assignment was due, which is in four hours). I can't even begin to count the number of times I have done this procrastination bit. Take my medical school application: I didn't feel that I could write a good essay, so I just ignored it until I had to deal with it the week before the application was due. Believe you me this is no way to live your life. What I learned from this week's particular experience is that problems are not nearly as magnanimous as they seem. All the agonizing I did over beautifying my homepage seemed so futile once I actually got started because I was able to really get into it.
All in all, this week's task ended up to be a lot of fun, but it did cost me a lot of negative emotions because of my feelings of futility and inadequacy. Had the feelings persisted, I am confident that I would have eventually developed an ulcer.
I feel that these skills that I utilized this week will be invaluable in the future as my homepage evolves into my own little work of art. Although I did know how to do many things already, there were a few things that I learned (on my own!):
1. I was having problems getting my backgrounds to show up on my homepage. I had downloaded to my CSS account several of my favorite backgrounds from a backgrounds page on Netscape, but when I tried to use them on my homepage, the background remained the same as I previously had it. Well, it turns out that I had been using the wrong command. Because I had merely used a colored background previously, the command was: body bgcolor=".....". The command I needed to use was: body background=".....". "Body bgcolor" only allows one to use a color code, but not a .gif file as background allows.
2. In creating a layout for my homepage, I used commands from somebody else's file that I liked. Unfortunately, I did not understand what the commands meant. Through experimentation, I have come to learn that:
a. ul (in brackets) allows you to indent a line and every line thereafter. If you want a further indention on a line after an indention, you just type ul (in brackets) again. When you don't want to indent anymore, you type /ul (in brackets). If you have indented more that once, you must type this the number of times you indented so that the margin is back to normal.
b. i (in brackets) = italics; b (in brackets) = bold; and I assume u (in brackets) = underline. When you don't want these things anymore, you must type /i, /b, /u (all in brackets), respectively, after the last word.
That's all the new skills that I learned, although I was able to make good use of an old skill -- saving a picture/image to my disc and then fetching it to my CSS account. I must say that I've gotten quite proficient at this. Thus, I feel that these skills are very valuable and I have and will be getting good at this week's tasks.
I am still very satisfied with the computer and internet systems. They are so easy once you "know the code" as AT&T would put it. The first few weeks of this course we're really grueling in trying to decipher the code, but now that we know what we're doing, I don't think anyone feels too much animosity toward the computer; I know I don't. I've probably mentioned this before, but I used to be so anti-computers. I never wanted anything to do with them and only tolerated their existence out of necessity for doing papers. It was not until college that I actually began to understand and like computers.
I have to admit, because of this assignment I was really hating this class and really regretting that I even took it, but now I feel so good about the work that I have accomplished as far as beautifying my homepage goes. I know I have so much more to accomplish, but it was such a battle just to get this far that I feel like I've come a long way in this one week. Don't get me wrong though; I hope I never again go through what I went through for this class this week because it really generated some animosity that I wasn't aware that I had, but for now, I am psyched to continue on my journey of evolving my homepage and only wish I had more time to do all that I need to do. My resolution for the week is to try to put files into all of my links. I have already planned out what I will put in them, I just need time to accomplish the task at hand.