the ability to reflect on one’s own thinking as well as on the

individual and cultural processes used to structure knowledge.

Reflecting on my own thinking was foreign to me. I have never really trusted my mind and my own knowledge, and so to trust myself felt odd. I think the reason I don't trust myself is because I immensely trust my parents and their opinions. Both of mother and father are intelligent and I feel like they always know they answers to my questions. However, I need to learn how to do this for myself. When editing for my first project, I was nervous because I had no idea what was wrong. The first step I took was looking at what my peers said, and they said that I lacked focus on my subject, Rebecca. So, I went back to my interview with her, and I added in a little more detail to what I said about her. For example, she told me in the interview how she felt about gun control. I put this piece of information in a random paragraph in my first draft. While editing my work, I managed to make it work with the concluding paragraphs when I talked about how the campus changed after the incident. I mentioned gun control anyways, and then managed to connect Rebecca's opinion with the paper. With my second project, a similar thing occurred. I focused too much on the project of Hungry Planet and not enough on the actual picture. When looking back, I went and only summarized my points about the project. I went to the words I used for analyzing the photograph and went more into detail about each of the rhetorical strategies. Even though the project does use ethos, pathos, and logos, and I needed to analyze a specific picture rather than the whole project. Even though I had difficulties in confidence for the projects, I had actually had fun reading my own thoughts about my portfolio. Since I feel somewhat confident in my skills of layouts, I know that I can write a creative portfolio and readers can be entertained by my writing.

When I thought about thinking about thinking, I realized that my brain was automatically trying to figure out the situation in my head. It was wondering why I wasn’t focused on anything, and tried to decipher what I was trying to accomplish. This experience differed from my first meditation because I tried new things like stretching my arms up to stretch my back, and I thought about exhalation was exhaling all my stress away. I closed my eyes to give my eyelids a rest from the whole day of staying open, and I felt an urge to stretch my neck side to side to loosen tense muscles. I learned thought my own thinking process that my brain in constantly trying to complete everything with utmost excellency, and I was really trying to reach a state of emotional equilibrium. I also noticed I would get distracted from the original task and think about the origin of sounds and why certain muscles in my neck and back were sore, but as soon as I was finished thinking these thoughts, I went back to the ultimate goal of feeling immensely relaxed. By the end of this experience, I felt like I was in a half-awake half-asleep mood, I felt that my heart rate had dropped and my breathing speed had slowed down. Almost like feeling full, my contentment felt full, and I wasn’t think about a problem in the world.