October 20th

I have decided that I am going to keep my responses to this course as part of my journal, I feel that I am really pouring my heart into the discussions and even the quizzes. These are really a part of what is changing me, so I will be doing the assignments in my journal and copying them to the discussions. (Discussion responses in italics.)When I initially took the test my score for family was fairly low. This really puzzled me. I looked back at the questions that I had answered low and realized that the questions were posed regarding feelings toward parents. I chose to reanswer those questions arking Not Applicable to me and my score changed that Family was the highest value. I did some thinking about how my upbringing has so influenced me and how I feel or view things and that I have so overcome some of those challenges that what would have seemed to be my lowest value, was actually my most important value. I felt that the values scale was very accurate for me. It also helped me to recognize some areas that I would like to work on. One being physical. I realize that I have a great influence on my children and the things they see me value become important to them. I have mentally made a goal to work on representing physical aspects that will help me to feel better and also to have more mental and emotional energy. The lowest scores on my test included wealth and renown. I agree that these are the least important values to me personally, but in writing my paragraph I spent the most time evaluating the question on wealth. This puzzels me still. I also feel that I very much enjoy praise and being noticed for my accomplishments, but I think that I am not necessarily motivated to do things for that praise, which made me feel really well balanced. I do things because of the pleasure I get from them, not because of some good mark people will give me. The most prominant innaccuracy that I found was in the initial reading of the value of family which I was able to really learn something about when I went back over that part. Again, I think that it was innacurate because my gut reaction to the question was to score it low on the questions that regarded parents, I did not think first about myself as a parent or how I view parents in general, only my circumstances. This was really interesting to begin the course and I am sure that I will reflect back on what I have recognized in myself throughout the process of our many assignments.