5V; Natural Benefits

 "As precious as life itself is our heritage of individual freedom, for man's free agency is a God-given gift."

--David O. McKay

 The word agency is one I’ve heard only related to law enforcement or business, but there is a second meaning that can pertain to the topics we have covered in class. When looking at the readings for this week, they all involved advice on how to succeed in college and better time management skills, along with the time study we completed this week. Moving forward, I need to rely on my agency to move me and initiate changes so that I can fulfill my days efficiently. Agency is a power we all are born with and can activate it in order to manage our time or become the best student we can be. It can be used to critical think, take our thinking out of the box, and simply push us to learn more than surface meanings of the material. It can also be a subconscious decision to complete homework and assignments that we know will help us to succeed in a class. In this way, agency is a benefit to us in that we are so used to having our lives scheduled out for us, but with our own willpower and own initiative, we can use the agency we were born with and figure out life for ourselves. Essentially, it is an action we take to have a certain effect. For instance, we can manage our time and set goals to ultimately get good grades and eventually graduate. 

                Carrying on through this week, a new word to my vocabulary was hegemony. I found this noun to mean, “leadership or predominant influence exercised by one nation over others” It was used in media however to mean, “the domination of culture by one particular cultural group, resulting in the empowerment of certain cultural beliefs, values, practices over others.” Using this definition, I automatically think of the Woman’s Suffrage through the 1920s and how society was dominated by men, and how different society is now as we see more and more successful and powerful women. Another word stranger to me this week included permutation. In this word, I see the root word of mutation so I can infer that it meant something to do with change. The verb permute in the dictionary means, “to alter; change.” I can now permute my schedule in a way to make room for my top priorities!