By DMA Senior Ella Pyle

I have really enjoyed learning tools and skills to better myself in Optimistic Mindset that I can now bring with me beyond high school graduation. This class made me question why we behave the way we do and has given me tools to help me be happier and help regulate my emotions. I’ve already started incorporating most of the things we learned into my everyday life, and want to share more about my experience with meditation, the Community Building Agreement, and the importance of social connection. 

We learned a lot about meditation and the effects it has on you. We also watched the documentary called Dhamma Brothers to learn about the impact a 10-day meditation retreat had on inmates in a high security prison in Alabama. This is what really opened my eyes about the effects of mindfulness and meditation. The inmates all benefited in the end and learned how to control their emotions and feelings before acting upon it. Meditating for me has been a great tool in my life. It’s a great tool I’ve used when I’ve felt like emotions, including stress, anxiety, and anger, are taking over. Meditation has always helped calm me down and helped me reset my mood. Being in high school, having a part time job and juggling college applications has been really overwhelming, and having mediation to go to in this stressful time of my life has been more than helpful. 

This year our class made the Community Building Agreement which we shared with the whole school. Our class agreed that our school isn’t much of a community and we don’t know each other as well as we should. We felt like the different grades were too disconnected and we wanted to be less separated. We started the Community Building Agreement to bring people together. As this project grew momentum, we went as far as meeting with the Commandant, presenting at a faculty meeting, and reading the Agreement to the whole school at Parade. I personally talked to some teachers individually and they all supported the idea. I have anxiety especially when talking in front of others, so I appreciate that this project helped me to grow as a person with the opportunity to present something that I actually believe in to a room full of people that I look up to. This project gave me and other students an opportunity to step up as leaders in a non academic or athletic way. 

Another thing we learned is that social connections really benefit you and others you connect with. This made me reflect on how much I hold  back on social connection with strangers because of the distraction of my phone. It’s made me realize how much society has changed because of our cellphones. Being a teenager my phone is always on me and I spend a good amount of time on it, but it’s important to know the ways that it negatively affects us and how we should regulate our cellphone use. I’ve really liked completing a gratitude journal in class. We talked about how much it’s normalized to complain and about how most small talk is complaints. Complaining does make our mood worse, always focusing on the negative. Gratitude journaling is a way to reverse this common action and focus on all the good moments we usually look over. This class gives you a bunch of life skills that usually aren’t taught in school that could benefit your everyday life. If you have the option to take an Optimistic Mindset, I strongly suggest you do.