Blog 3: Cali Ruth Hays

The question of "what do you want to do with your life?" can be extremely overwhelming and frustrating for most college students, but it honestly should be. What we want to spend the rest of our lives doing is an important decision and most people, including me, get scared even thinking about it. However, college is the time to decide who and what we want to be. Even though people tell you that there is plenty of time to figure things out, that is just not the case. In the beginning, it is essential to keep your options open and find what you're passionate about, but there comes a point where time starts running out and you need to make an executive decision about your life. The Defining Decade, by Meg Jay, discusses an idea called the jam experiment. The experiment consists of 2 separate scenarios where jam suppliers let customers taste 6 flavors of jam at one stand and 24 flavors at another stand. The stand with 24 flavors attracts more customers because there is so many options, but only 3 percent went on to actually buy jam. The stand with 6 flavors helped customers be able to decide what they liked instead of getting overwhelmed by too many flavors. This supplier resulted in 30 percent of customers going on to buy jam. The overall point of this experiment is to prove that having too many options is often not beneficial in the long run. It is easier to have fewer, more precise options that focus on things you actually like to do. Alina Tugend, who writes for the NY Times, discusses the jam experiment in her article and talks about how too many choices does not give us a lot of freedom and often limits our freedom because of the time we waste trying to make a decision (Tugend).
Secondly, Facebook is a huge industry that connects people and keeps everyone updated with others. There are numerous benefits of it, but Facebook also serves as a cite where people compare themselves to others portray themselves differently than how they really are. People put up a front on Facebook so others will believe their lives are perfect, when they really aren't. The most negative aspect of this industry is the comparison trap. Someone will think they are successful and thriving in life, until they log onto Facebook. They see the accomplishments of others and be immediately disappointed or think they aren't doing as well. In the Comparison Trap article, by Rebecca Webber, she also discusses how Facebook can make someone's life look amazing online when they are actually struggling underneath all of it. People find their worth based on how many likes they get instead of actual, real life success. This is a growing problem in our society that needs to be stopped.

Jay, Meg. (2012). The Defining Decade. New York, NY. Hachette Book Group.

Tugend, Alina. (2010 February 26). Too Many Choices: A Problem That Can Paralyze. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/27/your-money/27shortcuts.html

Webber, Rebecca. (2017 November 7). The Comparison Trap. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201711/the-comparison-trap