4A: Patience, please!

http://education-portal.com/cimages/multimages/16/marshmallow_test.png

"Writing about this in The New Yorker last spring, Jonah Lehrer reported that preschoolers who waited the full 15 minutes grew into teens with SAT scores that were, on average, 215 points higher than the tots who ate the marshmallow in the first 30 seconds."( http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/02/19/just-let-them-eat-the-marshmallow.html)

From a young age, we are taught and known rather to have delayed gratification or instant gratification, and the marshmallow test showed us the results. 4 year old children were taken in a room with 1 marshmallow, but told if they waited 15 minutes , they would get 2. A lot of the children went with instant gratification and ate the marshmallow right away or in less than 3 minutes, while only a slim few of them delayed gratification and waited. The comparison with the test and the children years later, showed the results above.

Throughout my life, I have had many things that I expect will be worth waiting for. One of those will be graduating college. I think it will be worth waiting for because once I am done with college, I will be a smarter, more educated person and have a college degree. Another thing that was worth waiting for was getting my license and getting a car. This was exciting because then I could have the freedom of driving myself places and not having to rely on other people for rides.

A lot of people say that Americans hate waiting, and have no patience. An example I see a lot of this is while I'm driving to and from school. People are so impatient that if the car in front of them is going slow, or they don't start driving the second the light turns green, then some people get mad. They may follow the person in front of them extremely close or honk their horn at the car to show they don't have the patience for that persons driving. This is very true, because I myself do it sometimes. If someone is going below the speed limit, I'll get frustrated easily. Americans are grown up in a society where we don't have to be patient, because everything now a days is instant. For example, drive through instead of waiting in a restaurant. Computers, for instance, today versus 30 years ago, you could look something up on the computer and find things easily rather than going to a library and looking it up or something. Another example is at a line in the supermarket. People often get really angry when there are always lines in the store and they have to wait more than 5 minutes. Americans are said to always be in a hurry and want/get things right when they want them.

As a society, do we do enough to prepare and use the skills necessary for delayed gratification or do we value instant gratification instead? I think there is no definite answer, because some people have very good delayed gratification and others do not. Usually people value instant gratification because they want things right away and have no patience. Technology does play a big role in that, because ever since we’ve had technology it has made people go crazy in knowing that they want stuff right away instead of waiting. For example, we have texting instead of calling so you could get an instant reply. One more example is that you can order food online instead of going into a restaurant, you can pre-order it, then go there and quickly eat it and move on to your next activity. Technology has shaped who we are as Americans, making us want instant gratification even more. I believe that if you try hard enough, and then teach yourself and others to learn the skills of delayed gratification, the world would be more friendly and enjoyable.

While looking at the menu for Chilis I stumbled upon this ad on top of the page...
Why wait? Order online!