Author: VeronicaX

After watching the TED talk video, I learned that I am also a Gen Z, who was born in this network information age. We can know everything that happens during the world in any second, which makes us much closer to the world but we are also accepting some negative news or thoughts that affected us. We can not live without social media because we need to connect to people and the world, so how can we not be affected by those negative media? There are some ways that can help us.

First, I think we need to read much more news so that we can know how the world work and what is happening in the world. Second, we need to create our subjective judgment. We can not believe what the negative news or articles said because the writers usually write them a little bit exaggeratedly to attract readers’ attention. For example, I know there were some parades around my neighborhood because of the death of the African American. Some shooting cases also happened. I was very scared for the first time I heard about that news. But I remember my father always tells me: “When you still are a child, the most important thing you should do is to make sure you are safe and then work hard on your academic things.” Since I lived in this neighborhood for almost one year, there was nothing scared happened and it was very safe to live here so I didn’t feel nervous any longer. The only thing I need to do is protect myself and keep me safe.

All in all, we should be appreciated that we were born in this information developed age so that we can connect to the world closely. As we are accepting this much information from the world, we should have rational thinking and subjective assessment. We also can do something to make social media better and make it benefit humans.

After watching that video, I have some special thoughts I want to share. Although it was talking about history and Marco Polo’s story, I think there were many other things we can learn from it.

I think he decided to visit the Mongolian Empire, it was a brave decision. We all know that it was really hard to travel to another country at that time. It told us, we need to be brave, try to get new knowledge, and face the challenge. Although Marco Polo seeing how rich Mongolian Empire was, how advanced it was, and how many entertainments it had, he wrote it down without any bias only with his objective judgment. From that we can learn, when we are inspecting somethings that we don’t know, we should seek truth from facts. We should learn from others’advantages and rethink our disadvantages, then we can improve ourselves. And also be humble about our progress, that will make us improve incessantly.

For the first time, Marco Polo published his book ” The Travels of Marco Polo”, there were many people thought he was a liar. Because they couldn’t believe there was another country that was much better than in Europe. And still to this day, there still many people didn’t understand ” seeing is believe”. For example, famous movie stars are arrestive, when they do something, there must be some discussions about them. And then some people will think they are doing bad things only according to a few pictures.

Therefore when we are learning or hearing something, we should believe the truth and have our own opinions. And not be fear to try new things or learn new stuff.

According to the TED talk video, it showed me a new way to think about my brain. It is a truth that our brain are changing everytime, like when we learn some new skills, when we read some books… We learn new staff and think all the time, our brain change. Every time when we learn new things or skills, that called neuroplasticity, it help us to be a better person, because since we know that thing we can practice skills that we good at. And we can also try new things or give up some parts that we are not good at.

The speaker, Dr. Lara Boyd also said, ” The best driver of neuroplastic change in your brain is your behavior.” We are acting all the time, so change our behavior I think it’s not a big deal, but keep doing that and make it become a habit, is kind of difficult to do. For example, there is a person who do not know how to speak English and one day he need to learn how to speak it, so he try to memorize 50 English words every day. Well, he never memorize English words untill that day, maybe it is easy to do that on the first day, sencond day or third day. But after a week, there might be some “give up” ideas show in his brain, because it doesn’t become into a habit. If he keep doing that for a month, I think when there is one day he do not memorize English words, he will feel weird, because he already be used to do that. That is how our behavior change, it takes time. In real life, that is the truth. If we want to become better or learn a new skill, what can we do? The answer is practice. ” Practice makes perfect.” Every time you see someone is very good at doing something, you can admire them, but also you should think how much time do they spend on practicing it. And we also need know there are many differences from person to person. Maybe we are not good at sport, but we show our talent on painting, then we can carry forward the advantages and learn more about art.

Our brain has infinite creative power, it’s waitting for us to discover it, to arouse potential, and to make it better. The way we can change our brain and become better is keep learing and practicing, face to the difference between you and others, keep doing right things, you will succeed.

I chose The Ransom of Red Chief. The story was about two guys want to kidnap a boy whose father was rich. And they did. But they find the boy was super annoying and he freaked them out. So they returned the bot back without asking the money and they even paid for it. For the racial undertones part, I am not much sure about that. But I can see there were somethings about Indian and American things. The story is an irony. It gave readers a very interesting thought that who was the actual kidnapper? The two guys or the bot’s father?

I think what the story wanted to teach us is do not make money through wrong way. If you do the bad thing, there must be some pulishment give to you. The story just told the truth by a funny way and make more sences to readers. So be a good guy and never do wrong things.