John Frontczak

Senior Seminar, 8

WoK Analysis: Emotion

A Help and a Hindrance

Emotion as a way of knowing is a key factor in adding to our knowledge base, but the academic

slanderers and the system of modern life it can and often does hamper our learning in addition to aiding

us. A factor of emotion which works nicely for this parallel in my experience is that of emotional energy,

which is the drive to perform an action in order to achieve an emotion, be it joy, satisfaction, sorrow,

anger, etc. The two personal academic course examples I will use to demonstrate this concept of this

factor of emotion as a way of knowing is drama, and computer science.

Now, emotional energy is a obvious help to me in drama. It drives me to put in strong physicality

into my movements and lines, it energizes me in order to do many performances and rehearsals late

into the night and continue to want to do it the next day. It also is what fuels my actions in mimicking

other emotions, through the energy I feel I channel it into different emotions in order to understand and

portray them more accurately. Though I also enjoy doing computer science, and at its root emotional

energy also is what causes me to continue pursuing it. However, sometimes if I learn something or have

too much energy I miss points in class, information, or techniques that are vital because I am unable to

focus. This obviously impedes my learning, and demonstrates that emotion can both aid me in my

actions, learning how to portray emotions and giving me the drive to learn, and hinder me, by causing

me to lose focus or not think clearly.