The shoreline was known for having the best fishing spots on the lake. Jessie was sitting at one of those spots, but her fishing line still hadn’t moved an inch. With a deep sigh, Jessie pulled out the line and cast it back into the water. Her dream of catching a big fish was fading. “I can’t believe I haven’t caught a fish yet. Not a single one,” she thought. Just as she was about to give up and leave, the fishing line suddenly became tense. Jessie excitedly held onto the fishing pole as it began to move around wildly. Her eyes widened and her heart began to beat faster with excitement. With a big smile, she could feel that this was the biggest fish she had ever caught!

Our ability to respond to danger has been important for survival, so feeling worried in uncertain situations is normal. Feelings of worry, which are activated in anticipation of future events, are often experienced in everyday situations. For example, we may feel nervous imagining unlikely events, such as a computer crashing during an important presentation. To some extent, thinking through potential scenarios can be helpful. When our worries exceed our control, however, they cause us unnecessary suffering. Consider how many times you have lost sleep thinking about a terrible situation, which, in the end, did not actually take place. If that situation actually occurred, it only goes to show that worrying about it did nothing to prevent it from happening. It is worth making a conscious effort, then, to stop worrying endlessly about events you may not experience.

Basing your self-worth on climbing performance puts you at the whim of external factors. These factors may be random and misleading. Comparison is one source of illusion. Perhaps you felt that you performed well on a certain climb because your partner was having an off day and found the climbing very difficult. You found it only slightly difficult and conclude that you were climbing quite well, when in fact you were climbing no better than usual. Or, your partner was at the top of his game. You felt weak in comparison, when in fact, objectively, you put in a very strong performance. Environmental factors may be involved. Perhaps you mastered your day’s objective due to especially favorable conditions, such as low humidity, when in fact, you really didn’t climb particularly well. In all these cases, the good or bad feelings you have are not based on something you can take credit for. If the performances boost your self-worth, the boost is grounded in fiction.

*whim: 변덕**illusion: 착각***humidity: 습도

Information and meaning are, clearly, not the same thing. The former refers to uninterpreted data or sensory states whose probability in a certain situation can be easily measured; the latter refers to the interpretation of the data or sensory states, including the special kinds of nuances and values that the information entails, or is intended to have, in the given situation. This applies to any type of information, from alarm signals to sophisticated statements. Take, for instance, a coin-tossing game in which it is decided that throwing three heads in a row constitutes a win. If a certain player ends up consistently with the desired outcome, defeating all who challenge that player, then we tend to interpret the outcome either as the work of Fortune, or else as clever and undetectable cheating on the part of the winning player. Interpretation is at the core of everything we do, think about, and feel.

*sophisticated: 정교한

The purpose of class discussions is to encourage you to be an active participant, not a passive recorder. Much of the emphasis in a discussion is on getting students involved in thinking, reacting, and responding. These are important intellectual activities in the learning process, for through them you are supposed to discover and express your opinions. Writing is an invaluable tool for accomplishing these tasks. Unfortunately, too many times, when class discussion begins, pens and pencils go down. Admittedly, it is considerably more difficult to take notes from discussions than from lectures, for, unlike lectures, discussions tend to be disorganized and difficult to follow. Also, students usually don’t know how much of what other students are saying is important. And if you are an active participant, it is not easy to take notes and formulate what you want to say. But note taking in discussions is not only manageable, it is also important. Note taking helps to keep you active and alert; it allows you to impose some organization on the discussion; and it can prepare you to speak.

*impose: 부과하다