commandant | SERIOUS PSYCH PAPER

“A conclusion is where you got tired of thinking” –Arthur Bloch

1. What thoughts and feelings are generated when focusing on your quote?

To be entirely honest I am not much of a deep thinker, I mainly chose this quote through process of elimination getting rid of the quotes where the idea of critically examining them felt legitimately repellant. Though I suppose from that you could say I came to the conclusion of writing my paper on this quote because I got tired of thinking about the other choices. In that case it seems like a very fitting choice because it basically describes my worth ethic when it comes to things I do not like, so clearly this is the best option for me to choose. I don’t think I get any feelings from this quote in particular other than the mild irritation and desire to basically turn this entire paper into a rant on why I don’t want to write this paper that the assignment as a whole is giving me. That said I am going to try to write this paper as legitimately as possible but since I am not willing to make up a bunch of stuff that sounds like what I am supposed to be saying that may be a lost cause. I think I’ve already driven the first question really far off the rails without giving any real answers, unless the fact that it has clearly demonstrated my attitude towards it counts as answering the question.

2. Is there a relationship between your quote and the way you see the world.

There is definitely a relationship between my quote and the way I see the world if you interpret the quote as I did in the first paragraph as meaning that you come to a decision when you cannot possibly be bothered to think about the other options you have. For the sake of this assignment I am using the definition of the word conclusion synonymous with decision, as if I were to include the scientific definition of conclusion I would disagree with my interpretation of it entirely. That would be awful, that is not how science works at all. I have to use my interpretation otherwise the entire paper would just be “NO, GET OUT OF HERE ARTHUR BLOCH THAT IS NOT HOW SCIENCE WORKS” in a 72 point font and you would have to give me an F and that would be terrible. I’m talking about the sort of conclusions where you don’t have concrete data to base your conclusion on. Certainly you could have reasons for the conclusion you came to, but if it’s something like deciding what ice cream flavor to get you’re obviously not going to have objective reasons to pick one over the other unless your two options are vanilla and “poisonous bug crunch” or something equally non-edible. Realistically you’ll have to make a choice based on personal preference. When you can’t come to a decision on something it’s usually because you’re thinking about it too hard. Then when you finally decide you’ve had enough you make your decision.

3. If so, can you give examples?

As I said in the first paragraph, my choice of this quote serves as an example of the quote in action. I did not want to think about the choices anymore so I settled on the one I thought would be easiest to apply my style of entertainingly vitriolic writing that I reserve for things I personally do not like that are not inherently bad, such as my inability to pronounce French words because of all the silent consonants and other phonetic idiosyncrasies that I am not aware of because I do not speak French. As far as other examples go, I’d say that it’s difficult to cite specific things as I feel it reflects more on a general outlook rather than something situational. When I was trying to decide which college to go to (before transferring to FSU that is) I found it immensely difficult to choose between the two I had been accepted to, and in the end just made the decision because thinking about it was driving me nuts. A lot of my tough decisions come from me getting tired of the anxiety caused by me delaying making them because I am overthinking things.

4. Does your quote have any hidden messages?

Not as far as I am concerned because if there is one thing I hate most about literary analysis, then it is having to assume that everything the writer wrote has some other meaning to it. Not to say that this never happens but half of the time I feel like the author probably just meant “The curtains are blue” rather than “THE MAIN CHARACTER IS DEPRESSED THE BLUE CURTAINS SYMBOLIZE HOW HIS OUTLOOK ON LIFE IS ‘BLUE’.” That said I think it would be difficult to extract another meaning from such a short quote without any context. When an allegory occurred to me in a book I was reading the other day, I had to cite several separate statements/occurrences to explain why I thought item A symbolized item B. Maybe looking at this quote from a literary analysis standpoint isn’t the right thing to do, but it’s the method that makes the most sense to me. You could say it’s the conclusion I came to when I got tired of trying to think what else this quote could possibly mean.

5. If a friend believed the opposite of your quote, how would it read? How might they support their opposition?

I’m not sure how you would describe the opposite of this quote, perhaps something along the lines of “a conclusion is where you have carefully considered all options or explanations and make the best choice available.” The ability to reason is what sets humans apart from all other species, after all. Alternatively, maybe something more like “a conclusion is where you have finished thinking” would be a more concise and similar phrasing. They could argue that you come to a conclusion once you’ve thought all that you need to think to come to an answer. But really you could always think more about it, even if what you think about is ridiculous or entirely improbable. What if a giant centipede thirsty for blood suddenly dropped out of the sky? How would that affect your decision making process, imaginary friend? Obviously that is not going to happen but the point is that you could still think about it, such as whether you would try to fight the centipede or try to outrun it or a million other things. It’s just that most sane people wouldn’t concern themselves with such thoughts.

6. Ask two people to read your quote. Do they believe in your argument or do they oppose? Are they somewhere in the middle? If in the middle, how would their quote read?

OH WAIT I NEED HELP TO DO THIS

7. Should your quote apply to all people?

I think the people who made the TV show Ancient Aliens should not be allowed to have this applied to them as they seem to have gotten tired of thinking about the unsolved mysteries of the ancient world and came to the conclusion that “aliens did it.” And that is patently ridiculous. But in all seriousness, as I hinted at in the paragraph concerning the imaginary friend’s argument, I think that technically speaking this is how everyone comes to decisions. You could spend forever imagining every possible way a scenario could play out. But you don’t because you don’t have time for ridiculous things like that. You come to a conclusion and you move on with your life.

8. Are there any influences from your past that may have impacted your contention concerning your quote?

One time I wrote a reading response paper on a Thoreau essay that was mostly me complaining about his misuse of punctuation and I got an A. That doesn’t answer this question exactly but it answers why I chose to write my paper in this manner. I took my position on the meaning of this quote because it made sense to me as a way of defining decision making. I think really any position anyone has on anything that doesn’t have a concrete answer is going to be influenced by their past. Just like having a bad experience with a dog might make you predispositioned to fear dogs, so too could any number of things influence your outlook on life.

9. If you had to explain this quote to a first grader, what would you say? How would you answer their poignant question: WHY?

I don’t think it would be that difficult to explain this to a five year old. They would be able to understand if you told them that a conclusion is when you make up your mind on something because you don’t want to think about it anymore. A conclusion can be something as simple as deciding whether they want a PB&J or Bologna sandwich for lunch. As for why, it’s because if you spend all your time trying to make up your mind, you won’t have any time to act on the decision you make. What if they spent all their lunchtime deciding which sandwich they wanted? Then they wouldn’t have any time to eat it. I think that would be an explanation of the quote that would be simple enough for them to understand.