drawing on humour for change

Humour can change the world. And so proves Liza Donelly with her talk. 

Women have always been at the base of our society, they race our children, and they're hard workers too. Unfortunately the role of women is not always the one they decide: women are influenced by their families, by their friends, teachers, neighbours, media... women are influenced by society since they're born to play the exact role they're ment to.

After growing up surrounded by the feminist movement, Liza decided to turn her passion, drawing, into a way of changing the world. Nowadays, her witty humour inspires us on newspapers and magazines.

In my opinion Liza was really brave to step out of the box and express her feelings by drawing, and the fact that she claims for a better world, where equality and human rights are reclaims belonging to the past, makes her a current hero.

hapiness at work

Is happiness important when working?

Of course it is! Check out this infographic and discover how happiness is involved in every single thing of our daily life. In fact, it also influences on our performance at work.

Our society tends to think that the more you have the happier you are... Really? Happiness is not about having money or brand new stuff, but feeling comfortable with yourself and with your environment. The benefits of happiness are endless, though today we're focusing on one of them: being happy at work.

Being happy at work triggers an enhance of your output and make you more likely to ascend to a better post and even boost your colleagues' job performance. Besides, the improvement of your own results will make you feel more self-confident, and... guess what: happier!

 

is humour necessary?

To laugh or not to laugh... that's not a question!

Humour is an essential part of the human race that should never be questioned. Just like other feelings tha emerge from our heart spontaneously, like anger, joy or sadness, humour is present in our daily lives. Yet humour is noy only a feeling, but also a very powerful tool to be used in many ways: to overcome sadness, to socialize one or even to change the world.

We can expect many benefits of humour: to amuse us, to change our mood... but its best point is that it boosts our eagerness to live and it triggers a noticeable enhance of our health according to what scientists of Birmingham Univeristy stated as the conclusion of many years of research.

To sum up, we must always remember Stephen Hawking’s words: giving up on humour is giving ip on yourself.  

*this is fiction, any resemblance with reality is pure coincidence;)

joke!

how to make stress your friend

Psychologist Kelly McGonigal has been teaching people for more than ten years how to avoid stress, turning it into the enemy. Now, recent research has changed her mind, and so she wants to do with us: stress isn't harmful for our bodies, but how we face it can bring serious increase of heart disease risk.

It shows up that the effects on our bodies such as sweat and heart pounding that we've always associated with negative feelings aren't that bad. Stress is preparing us to face challenges, to do our best on whatever we're doing and consequently, succeed. Another amazing result of being stressed is that we become more social: the pituitary gland pumps out oxytocin, a neuro-hormon that makes us become more compassionate, empathetic and even sorround ourselves by people we care about.

To conclude, I must say that with this talk I haven't only learnt about how to stand stress but also some new vocabulary such as nudge (gentle encouragement or reminder), seek (search, look for) or vessels (where blood flows through)... So I feel like the only thing I can say about it is thanks. Thanks Kelly for teaching us! :)

terrorism

Terrorism is a global problem. There are many ways of terrorism, one of the most recent is the informatic one, on the internet. But by now, the most common is the aggressive one, the one that causes death, terror and pain. If you read the word carefully it won't be difficult for you to understand where it comes from: the act of causing terror among people... Now think, is it a good way of trying to change things?

Of course it is not! They can't see that the only thing that terrorism gets is hate, fear and chaos.

In my opinion terrorism is the worst way of manipulation. Some organizations may even rule like a lobby, but there's no point on achieveing power by the force. We live in a democracy, and although we still have a long walk before we reach an equal society based on respect, honesty and truth, we must try to keep it improving. Terrorism is nothing but a stone on the road to freedom and we must wash it away.

How? You may ask. It's not going to be easy. I haven't said it is something we can fight within a few days. Even though, we must stand against it and try to erradicate it: together we can do anything. Together... And with some help of our governments, who must ignore any pressure they might recieve from terrorists, and also be truthful to us (but that's another issue to deal with...).

looking back

During this year I've noticed an improvement in my writing thanks to the huge amount of opinion essays we've done. Even though, I think that my best skill in English is not writing but listening and speaking. Perhaps speaking doesn't show off that much because I'm a bit shy when talking to someone who has to evaluate me, the I get nervous and start making absurd mistakes. It's been very useful for me to write that exhausting number of essays. In contrast, I don't really like writing on the blog, I prefere to handle my writings to the teacher. Something I also dislike a little is to evaluate my peers. next year I'd like to continue doing oral presentations and basically all the stuff we've been doing this year.

In conclusion, I've liked this schoolyear and I'm eager to start second of batxillerat.