Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

At the beginning of chapter eleven, the focus was on prenatal development and how drug and alcohol use can interfere with proper development. Fetal alcohol syndrome is a collection of inborn problems associated with excessive alcohol use during pregnancy. Approximately one baby a day is born diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome.
A friend of my family works at a state run facility in Willmar Minnesota called Affiliated Community Medical Center. This facility deals with thirteen to seventeen year old adolescents that are so violent that their parents don’t want to deal with them or are so heavily medicated that they need help, but who they deal with most are people who suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome. One thing that I thought was really interesting was when he said that when a women is drinking, the alcohol can stay in her system for up to twenty-four hours but it can stay in the babies system for up to seventy-two hours. When these adolescents go here, they visit with psychologists and also attend classes to help these children to get further in life. These children didn’t choose to have these problems in life, it was their mothers who made horrible decisions and ruined the lives of their children.

Most Intelligent Person

I believe that my sister is the most intelligent person that I know. I think she is the most intelligent because all through her grade school years she got straight A’s and graduated in the top ten percent of her class. Not only did she do well in high school, she is doing great in college. She is doing so well she has made her schools dean’s list and started college with having over a full semester of credits already done. She knows how to play the clarinet and the piano very well. She can speak both English and Spanish. Also, something that really impresses me is that she does not procrastinate and does all of her work to the best of her ability. But not only is she good in school she also is someone who people get along with others well. She has high people skills and tends to always know the right thing to say. Another thing she does well is knowing herself and what she wants out of life. She sets realistic goals and has accomplished many of them. One that she has really worked toward is being able to travel a lot while still going to college to get a degree. And this summer she is going to New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, India, Egypt, and London.
Her intelligence best fits with G theory by Charles Spearman which says if someone is smart in one area they are also smart in another because she is good in social, analytical, and practical intelligences all at the same time. My sister is someone that I also consider to be a great role model because she possesses all of these great intellectual behaviors that make her the most intelligent person that I know.

The Big Five

While learning about personality, we learned that there are hundreds of different traits that a person could have. Robert McCrae and Paul Costa said that most of these traits can be resulting from just five higher order traits that are known as the “Big Five.” These five traits are Extraversion, Neuroticism, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. Doing a self report on the Big Five I would say:
I am higher on the extraversion scale because I am very outgoing. I enjoy going to parties, especially parties where I get to meet knew people and I like being around other people. When I am sitting at my house by myself I am always wishing that I was at a friend’s house. I would score myself very low on the neuroticism scale because I am very friendly. I always find myself introducing myself to new people. And while most people are nervous about going off to college by themselves without all their former friends as a security blanket, I am counting down the days until I get to meet my new roommate. I am very open to experience. I am always traveling around the world to experience different cultures and see how other people live their lives compared to myself. I would score myself pretty high on the agreeableness scale because whenever my friends need someone to vent to or have some one cheer them up they usually come to me because they know that I am someone who won’t go out and tell other people about what is going on. Also I would score myself very high on the conscientiousness scale because I am not a big procrastinator. A great example of this was in my foods class. For Innovative snack lab, our big project that we have to do is a cook book with different recopies we find our selves along with ones that we make up on our own. This project was assigned at the beginning of the semester and isn’t due until the end of May. I ended up finishing mine back in February. I feel that my personality has helped me to be a person that many people tend to get along with and one that people enjoy being around.