jenna tynan's blog

So, if you have read my other blog, you already know that I have a little intestinal problem called irritable bowel syndrome, but one of the comments I got mentioned Crohn's disease.  Now I heard about it from doctors pretty much saying, "Oh, thank heavens, you don't have it."  However, I did have a teacher that had it in high school.  Once reading the comment, it renewed my interest to look into Crohn's disease a little further.  If your interested in health topics, I would think this would interest you.  Read More »

So, I have to be honest and tell you that I was a pretty greedy little child.  I thought that I owned everything.  What did parents and teachers do to remedy my greediness?  Of course, they told me to share.  Contrary to belief, this could actually be hurtful to a child's development.

For preschoolers, interestingly enough, their self-concept (or how they define themselves) actually depends a lot on their posessions.  A typical preschooler might say: "I'm John. I can ride a tricycle and throw a ball.  Look at my new red truck.  I got it yesterday."  Actually, a child's development has been shown to be negatively altered if they are forced to share.  They feel as if they have lost a very important component of themselves.  That's why now or days, when kids do not want to share something that they perceive as theirs, parents and teachers are taught to take a different method to encourage sharing without hurting the child's sense of self.  Such as saying: "yes I know that you want to play with your truck.  How about in an hour we let Joe see how great your truck is."  It establishes that the truck is still the child's but also encourages sharing.  Read More »

So, looking around at my college and observing all the movers and shakers, it seems like the focus on education started pretty early for all of them.  So clearly, early childhood education in the preschool years is very important for future success.  The main controversy is which type is the best type.

There are two main types of early childhood education, academic centered and child centered.  Academic centered education makes kids pretty passive when learning.  They sit in desks most of the day and are instructed by teachers learning reading, writhing and mathematic skills.  Now the clear advantage here is that these kids will enter kindergarten with more academic skills.  Read More »

So, I'm probably sure that you all have heard about or read the speech of ex-Harvard President on the lack of female workers in the science and math industries (i.e. engineering).  Well, if you haven't, I'm going to include the speech below.  Now, I read through it and even as a girl, I think a lot of people gave him a harder time than he deserved, but here's the main gist of what he says.  Read More »

I have to say that I was blessed with pretty good parents.  Observing the iniative of many of you progressiveu bloggers, I'm assuming that you guys had pretty good parents too.  Well, the interesting thing is that even though I don't like blaming anyone but myself for my shortfallings, more and more research has shown that parenting plays a big role in a child's success in early childhood and later life.  Read More »

So a study conducted by two researchers named Thomas and Chess looked at a large group of children and labeled their temperment on quite a few characteristics.  However, the main three were their overall mood, their biological regularity (sleeping, bathroom routines), and how they react to new experiences.

They came up with three different types of kids.  One is the easy child, who had an overall good mood, reacted positively to new experiences without intense emotions and was biologically regular.  Read More »

So, I'm sad to report that I had a pretty bad past couple of days.  I had my first experience of getting up at 6:30 in the morning to pre-enroll in college courses and I made the most stupid mistakes on the easiest test in the world.  I pretty much felt like an idiot who had thrown away my future with one test.  Though I was definitely over-reacting at that point, that's how I felt and I needed a pick-me-up.  Well I did one of those things that society stereotypes for overemotional adolescent girls.  I went shopping.  Read More »

Alright, so I don't know about you, but its pretty much crunch time for me until December 13th (when I go home, yah!)  So, even though I pledged to myself before I went to college that I would never pull an all-nighter, it has inevitablely happened twice already.  Unfortunately, these wonderful nights in front of a computer finishing a paper have some unusual and almost comical side effects.  Read More »