It's about the midpoint in the semester. Morale may be low for some, and it may not be for others. I don't like to jinx myself, so I find it hard to say that my morale is high simply because I have been very on top of my assignments, due dates, and other school related things much more than I was last semester. It is rewarding to see hard work paying off, and it is even more rewarding to finally be able to take a deep breath and feel your shoulders relax after that test score you have been waiting on to be put in is finally there.

This semester I have been taking an Honors class called The Quest II. I was very nervous about this class because all I have heard about it was that it is one of the harder Honors classes because there is so much reading and analyzing involved. I was stuck with this one on my schedule because there were no other ones available at times that worked for me, so I decided to just suck it up and see what the quest was all about. When I say now, that at the midpoint in the semester, it is one of my favorite classes to go to, I am not kidding in the slightest. It is a small class with about eleven or twelve people. The professor is incredible. He is very well educated and loves to listen to us speak about topics that he has assigned for us. He is one of the truly amazing professors because he genuinely takes joy in simply teaching, not just making students memorize things so they can pass the class.

With all this being said, he has assigned us a lot of reading by now, but one of the most prominent pieces that has stuck out to me was Discourse on Method by Rene Descartes. This was the very first piece of literature that we read as a class, and every day I continue to find myself linking real life things to the words that were written. Basically, Descartes is describing his thought process and how he comes to his conclusions in a narrative form. He begins by telling the readers about the details of how he felt unfulfilled after finishing his schooling, like there was more to the world than the so-called best educators had been able to teach him. He tells about his traveling around the world and how much he learned by simply meeting these new people and becoming educated in other worldly things, things that were different and exciting and unlike anything he had experienced in his previous schooling. He points out that sometimes things must be knocked down in order to be rebuilt from the ground up so they can succeed. His idea of having a different opinion than somebody does not necessarily mean one of the two are right or wrong, but that the different experiences that both people have been through has led them down different paths and seen things through different lenses. One of the big points that Descartes makes is that he emphasizes that humans should not concern themselves so much with things of the world since nothing beyond our own thoughts are in our control; we just have to let things work out the way they are supposed to.

One of the ideas that Descartes is most known for would have to be his maxims. He has three maxims that he goes into detail about in his Discourse on Method. These maxims were basically his rules that he followed while he was pushing his mind to its limit, trying to reach full education and understanding of the world. These Maxims are:

1. Have moderate opinions because anything in excess is generally vicious.

2. Be decisive.

3. Challenge yourself because the only thing you can truly control is your own thoughts.

These maxims have been a constant idea in the back of my head because even though I am not traveling the world or trying to get full knowledge of the world like Descartes was, I can still apply these to my everyday life in order to become the best I can be. I still remember when we first read these maxims, I was surprised at how much these could potentially help not just me, but anyone with everyday things they may struggle with. I know that I personally struggle with being decisive, and that I really need to work on making decisions on my own and having my own thoughts and ideas, not letting much else influence me. I also need to work on challenging myself more and not just taking what is so called "fact" and believing it. The world is full of so many different thoughts and ideas and if I just stay in the same spot, stuck in my old ways, I will never learn anything new.

I would like to end with the key takeaways that I got from reading Discourse on Method:

1. In order to truly learn, one must destroy old opinions and be willing to accept that to know is to understand that we truly do not really know anything.

2. Be decisive. It does not matter if it may be the wrong one because you will still end up farther if you can make a decision and go somewhere then being stuck in the same spot.

3. Peace of mind comes with accepting that you can only control your own thoughts; anything external is in the will of chance's hands.

I titled this We Think, Therefore, We Are because one of Descartes most famous lines in this piece of work is "Cogito, ergo sum." This translates into "I think, therefore, I am." which simply means, in my opinion, that humans can think and formulate ideas and opinions of their own, therefore, they are their own person capable of doing their own thing. I hope that this sparked something inside the mind of anyone reading, and I hope that one can make the decision to take control of their own life.

Read Discourse on Method by Rene Descartes here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/59/59-h/59-h.htm