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An assignment for English Grammar and Style MOOC

I enjoyed the last week material on adjectives the most. Personally, adjectives are my favorites. I love learning new adjectives. Sometimes I think I am a little slow when it comes to noticing things about people or about the things around me. So when I learn a new adjective I think to myself "oh! That exists" , as if I have discovered a new thing about the world that I had not known before.

Everything has special characteristics and thus an adjective, or multiple adjectives, attributed to it. I have so many people around me who act in a certain way that most of the time I cannot describe. Therefore, when I learn a new adjective that is applicable to one of them I feel the world is ,somewhat, clearer.

For example, recently, I have discovered that my friend has a 'traumatized' mother, a 'bossy' father and she is probably an 'abused' child. Moreover I discovered that she works in a 'dead-end’ job, and for a 'negligent' boss, surrounded by 'unskilled' colleagues and that I am slightly ... judgy :-/ .It most be ‘dreadful’ to be her.

Isn’t it amazing how variable adjectives are? I think having numerous, precise adjectives is what distinguishes one language from the other.

Adjectives help me understand the world. For when you can’t describe something it doesn't exist. Moreover, finding how it is described makes me think that other people have thought of it too, or been through what I have been through. I believe they represent the peoples’ shared knowledge of the world and, to a larger extent, the united way in which we conceive this world.

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conditioned reflex concept : a simple example.

We all have heard of Pavlov's dogs,right?Pavlov in his experiment, would examine the salivation rate among dogs upon presenting them with food. while most of those dogs salivated ,Pavlov started to accompany the food presenting with a bell-ringing.After a short period, he began to ring the bell without presenting the food .He noticed that the dogs would salivate just as much as they did when there was food presented to them because they associated the sound of the bell with food.This experiment lead to the famous concept of the conditioned reflex.

Reading about this experiment reminded me of something that happens very often around me,which is my cat's behavior every time our door bell or interphone rings. Everytime someone is ringing our bell ,my cat would get up and run to the door and wait until someone opens it.It is really interesting,some people would laugh at him and say he was trying to open the door himself,well little did they know!. My cat ,over the years of living with us ,has associated our door bell sound with food.You might say ,How come?every time my parents go for grocery shopping they would ring the door bell or the interphone several times .Usually they would have bought meat or milk ,which my cat smells and demands some for himself,So upon him hearing the sound of the bell ,he expects food to be offered to him.I was genuinely surprised to realize how much my cat's behavior is relevant to Pavlov's study about the conditioned reflex.

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Saad

Saad Nasser

Bangalore, India | Age 11

I am in 5th standard now but I mostly home school myself. I prefer to homeschool because it gives me flexibility to learn at my own pace. I am a registered student in a school nearby, but I rarely go to school since 4th grade. I have already learnt most of the school curriculum by myself. My parents have taken permission from the school management and they have granted me the permission to attend school as suits me.

I learned about edX from one of my mentors from Intel in Bangalore, India. I used to learn from books my father got. Though I did learn a lot, I find that an online course is more structured and engaging and I get to check my knowledge as I go.

After auditing CS-191x Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Computation, 3.091x Introduction to Solid State Chemistry, and 8.01x Classical Mechanics, I’ve just completed 6.002x Electronics and earned my certificate. 6.002x was really fun and interesting; I particularly liked the online simulator and Anant Agarwal’s chainsaw demo on digital “noise” :) The demo was to explain “noise” in digital systems. Because we have hundreds of electronic devices, they radiate a small amount of electrical signals which other systems see as “noise”. Digital systems are more immune to noise. Chainsaws, as they contain motors, are very electrically “noisy” systems. The Professor took a chainsaw and channeled its electrical “noise” into the input to an AND gate and showed the noise immunity of digital systems. Professor Anant Agarwal explained everything in a very interesting manner, having demos interwoven with course material to add some fun. Also, the course covered a lot and the home works were well designed.

Having a mentor helps a lot as there are some concepts which require thorough explanation which a book alone cannot do. Both my mentors are very knowledgeable experts in their fields and I have learned much more from them than any book could teach me. The knowledge I get from them goes much beyond just the subjects, they also help me grow as a student.

edX has helped me continue my educational goals by having a lot of in-depth material on various interesting topics. I have interests across fields, e.g. rocketry, nanotechnology, biochemistry. If it was possible I would like to work on all of them. I am now taking the DelftX Aeronautics course and the RiceX discrete signal processing course. They are two of my favorite topics.

It is nice that we are able to get access to courses that normally we would not be able to do on our own. The ability to watch lectures anytime, at our own pace and being able to practically “rewind” on parts you cannot understand is a great feature for learning. The instant grading system is another change from the normal classroom, and is very helpful in finding out where you got things wrong.

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Lately, I have been too overwhelmed with my problems like how I can't find a job, and how I feel incapable of connecting with others, or thinking about my childhood and other negative things that usually bring you down and take your self-esteem down too. However, a few days ago I came across something that made all my problems look trivial.     Monday, it was late in the evening and I had nothing to do, so, I watched a movie, which I had had for a quiet sometime. The movie is called The Theory of Everything, a biography about the famous physicist ,professor Stephen Hawking. The movie is about his personal life, theories and his struggle with a rare disease, that lead to the loss of his ability to move and, later, to talk. Stephen Hawking made a break-through with his theories about space ,specifically, the formation of the black holes. The movie, being as good as it is, was an eye-opener on how enormous and mysterious our universe is, and  how  comparatively small we are.  After I finished watching ,I felt very inspired,  so I went on Youtube and started to view more reports about space.There were hundreds of videos about the sun, the black holes, the pulsars, and the galaxies. The reports include some footage of some space stations that observe space from Earth. There were scientists talking about things I couldn't understand and mass numbers  I couldn't possibly imagine. That hit home for me. There are, truly, more things to worry about in this world than some job I didn't get or an obstacle I don't  seem to overcome. Seeing those tapes made my fears look infinitesimally small and made me more confident that I can overcome every and each one of them.