Farah Hussain
9/18/12
Beyond IQ – Journal 2
My personal development plan has evolved to become quite specific with what I
should be doing with my time during the days of my life. To be honest, right now I am at
the planning step of the Model of Change. Well, actually, I fall in between the planning
and action steps of the model. This personal development plan involves me making
quite a large change in my habits and it is truly quite difficult to transfer my ways so
quickly. I still find myself staying up late at night to finish up homework. The biggest
problem is following through with my list I make the night before because I encounter
barriers such as friends coming over. I end up losing time by talking to them. For
example, today while I was supposed to be studying my roommate started talking about
scary movies and we ended up reminiscing about old scary movies that used to haunt
us. That led to us searching scary movie trailers on the ever so popular site, Youtube,
and watching them to enjoy a little thrill. Also, later today, all my suitemates were
watching Jeopardy on television which distracted me from doing my work. I still have a
long process to go to reach my goals. The next step I would take is to go study in the
library or a place away from my friends, because obviously studying with them present
has not been working for me. I think from that one change, I can get plenty done.
From reading the first part of The EQ Edge, I gathered a lot of information
pertaining to emotional intelligence and I found it interesting how important it is to
succeed in life. One striking piece of information that intrigued me was that IQ only
makes up about 6 percent on average of the success in a given job. However, EQ makes
up 27-45 percent of job success. I also found comfort in learning that EQ is not fixed and
can be improved. From reading the airport scenario in this chapter, a thought triggered
in my head about a time when I didn’t act with emotional intelligence towards my
parents. I was more like Sam rather than John from the airport story. There have been
times when my parents may falsely accuse me of doing something or blow something I
did way out of proportion. I remember many times when I react awfully and erupt at
them with anger. I struggle explaining myself because I would find myself too surprised
and anxious to calmly explain the full story. Handling these types of situations with
emotional intelligence would entail that I try to calm my parents first and get a hold of
what they are feeling. Then I would have to sympathetically explain myself and dialogue
well to get my point across. This way, I would have established a healthy conversation
instead of unpleasant accusations flying back and forth. In class when we discussed
further about EQ, I was pleased to learn that EQ grows with age. To me this meant that
my emotional intelligence can only improve and as I move on in the journey to my
career I would have well improved in my emotional intelligence that hopefully I would
be able to handle the stressful work environment.
Working with the Carson Elementary 2nd graders is actually quite stressful. It was
more stressful than I predicted it would be. The term emotional intelligence is quite
foreign to the young 2nd grade minds, so it was kind of difficult to explain to the young
ones what exactly we were doing. To ensure the students actually gain knowledge from
us visiting Carson, would be to separate them into small groups. We are already doing
that when we go there so I would say to continue that method. It is easier to give one
on one attention to the students this way and explain further directions. I would also
make sure to give some examples of reacting to a situation with good emotional
intelligence, and then I would give examples of reacting to a situation badly. I would
then maybe explain a scenario and ask the students how they would react to that with
good emotional intelligence. This way, the kids start thinking about reacting to
situations positively rather than with impulses. Their minds are forced to come up with
some good emotional intelligence strategies so if they ever are in a situation; they
remember what they have learned.