Resilience In Anna Harrington's Article Summary

Being resilient in tough situations can be substantial in some cases. To be resilient means one has great wit, especially in a 'finding a way out ' scenario. It can even be the key to survival, as can be shown in a short excerpt from Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand. It gives a great example of resilience based off of a situation that Louie Zamperini finds himself and crew in as their plane crashes in the Pacific Ocean. What characteristic is most important in helping Louie survive? Well, once one reads the excerpt, they can be given a great feeling of being a problem solver, or for short definition, skillful. To be skillful is very similar to being resilient, but it comes more into fact of being related to past experiences and knowing of

The Children of Willesden Lane, by Mona Golabek, is about a girl named Lisa Jura who is 14 at the time she is sent on the Kindertransport. When she gets to London she never gives up the hope of seeing her family again. Over the course of the story Lisa makes wonderful friends, is reunited with one of her sisters, and earns a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music. By the end of the story Lisa is around 20-21 and is reunited with her older sister, her sister’s husband, their daughter, and has made her first debut. Even though there are many times Lisa wants to give up she never does using love, bravery, music, hope and just pure resilience to pull her though. According to “10 Traits of Emotionally Resilient People”, resilience is a belief in oneself, yet also a belief in something larger than oneself. Lisa mainly uses three forms of resilience love, perseverance, and music to pull through her hard times.

The determination to live comes from human nature. But the urge of giving up when we come across a difficult problem is also a part of human nature. There a few people in this world that have the characteristics of resilience. As author Kendra Cherry describes them, "People that are able to keep their cool have what psychologists call resilience, or an ability to cope with problems and setbacks" (Source A; Cherry, 1). An example of someone who has the characteristics of resilience is a bombardier name Louis (Louie) Zamperini. After Louie’s plane crashed in the middle of the ocean, he and two other survivors had to overcome a series of conflicts before they could make it to safety. Throughout Laura Hillenbrand's book, "Unbroken", Louie’s most important characteristic of resilience that contributed to his survival was his awareness. With his awareness of his surroundings and situation, Louie was able to overcome the conflicts he faced such as shark attacks, dehydration, and starvation.

“I survived because the fire inside me burned brighter than the fire around me.” -Joshua Graham. Life is full of obstacles, some better than others and the ability to overcome a traumatic and abusive event in one’s life is defined as resilience. Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; to reflect toughness after an unpleasant life changing events. Colson Whitehead author of The Underground Railroad shows resilience through characters such as Cora, Mabel, and Caesar. All characters encountered cruel and horrific events throughout their lives and would overcome them, allowing themselves to seek opportunities in life. Some other examples of resilience were through Ping Fu and myself who have also suffered through some traumatic situations.

In Jeannette Walls’s book The Glass Castle, there are many examples of what is called human resilience. No better quote describes human resilience better than, “No matter how much falls on us, we keep plowing ahead. That’s the only way to keep the roads clear.” Which was said by Greg Kincaid. This point is very emphasized in the book in most of its plot points from the burning of Jeannette’s body from the hot dog accident to finally running away to New York from her irresponsible parents.

Hardy, Concato & Gill (2004) stated that resilient people are those who display “the capacity to remain well, recover, or even thrive in face of adversity”. Masten (2001) as mentioned that they are the ordinary person dealing with the challenges and tragedies of everyday real life. For instance, the response of many Americans to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and individuals’ efforts to rebuild their lives shows their resiliency. Being resilient does not mean that a person does not have or had experience difficulty or distress; the emotional pain and sadness are common but the path to resilience is likely to involve considerable emotional distress.

However, resilience may also be described as the innate human quality that has not necessarily developed only after big disasters but processed through positive adaptation. A person can be resilient if he/she experience positive life events such as a job promotion, wedding, birth of a new child or having a new pet. These incidents would require the person to perform new roles and responsibilities and he/she can develop resilience to these changes overtime. This is resilience acquired through positive adaption (Fletcher & Sarkar,

Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness. Various characteristics are needed to be resilient. In the book, Trouble by Gary D. Schmidt, Henry loses his brother, Franklin. But, Henry is able to stay in control of the things going on in his life. He has a plan of what he wants to do; climb Katahdin. He is also able to forgive in order to heal, and he is able to maintain healthy relationships with his friends and family. Chay, a Cambodian refugee who supposedly hit Henry’s brother, is not as resilient and does not have a plan. Chay does not forgive and does not have any relationships whatsoever. Henry demonstrates more resilience than Chay because he has control over his life, maintains relationships and forgives Chay.

In my view resilience can sometime be brought on by an emotional event and helps you with self-confidence. Additionally, I feel that resilience means that one can expect things that can happen in a process and can adjust accordingly to the situation at hand. My example of resilience was demonstrated in this TED talk video “My Escape from North Korea” by Hyeonseo Lee, she discusses her life in North Korea and how everything was transparent to her in North Korea as she was growing up until the age of seven.

What does resilience really mean to you? The literal definition to resilience is the ability to cope with problems and setbacks. In the story Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, she shows us all different kind of ways that the characters in her story used the skills that Kendra Cherry was talking about, to help them out of every situation. In this story it shows how certain situations affect people in different ways and how each person goes through seven skills. The characteristic that Louie undergoes is the skill of Strong Problem-Solving. The Strong Problem-solving skill is when a crisis emerges, people are able to spot the solution that will lead to a safe out-come. However, if you are not a non-resilient person you sometimes develop tunnel vision, which basically mean that you fail to notice important details or take advantages of oppurtunities.

The concept of resilience is often described as being able to recover from difficult experiences or pasts, where one’s resilience could be impacted by drastic changes that occur in their lives. It is something that guides one’s decisions and often defines their morals and what individuals perceive to be right or wrong; depending on the situation they are encountering. Resilience is highly dependent on the thought of empathy, where the resilience of people who have experienced empathy will be different from others who haven’t. How individuals deal with these differences determines one’s level of empathy and also impacts their resilience. Timothy Findley explores an individual’s struggle to keep a sense of resilience while

Survival is the act of surviving and doing what is required to lived; sociology has a theory called “Social Darwinism.” Social Darwinism could be broken down to one phrase, survival of the fittest. The notion survival of the fittest implies that those who are successful were meant to be successful and those who are not successful were meant to be in the situation they are in, the key is adapt and survive. M.K. Asante Jr. did just that in his memoir Buck. Buck is about the life of an inner city Philadelphia young black male who faced many obstacles and this young boy was able to overcome his circumstances. Malo’s mother was in and out of the mental hospital, his brother Uzi was in and out of prison, and his father was not really around. Malo’s life by design was meant to be cut short, being overran with drugs, gangs, and violence. Buck’s theme of survival in impossible circumstances represents the struggle of black teens in America because, the book take place in the inner city of Philadelphia, there are several mentions of drug abuse amongst those in the community, and prominent characters of young Malo’s life are

Resilience, as a specific strategy that individuals usually apply when they face a kind of adverse situation (Castro, et al., 2010), has been attracted a lot of attention among researchers. Resilience as a developmental attribute seems necessary for teachers to be more confident and successful in their teaching. More

In 1991 Norman Garmezy developed a theoretical framework for resiliency. Garmezy (1991) proposed three types of protective factors that make up his theoretical framework, which includes individual characteristics of the individual, a close-knit relationship with the family and lastly, social support and structure outside their immediate family. The primary factor in developing resiliency relates to the person's intelligence and character, and Garmezy (1991) states that resilient youth have above average intelligence. Garmezy (1991) defines the second factor in developing resiliency as one that includes the support of family to help with difficult conditions. The third common factor of resilient youth is external support from institutions (Garmezy, 1991). According to Masten (2001) “resiliency refers to a class of phenomena characterized by good outcomes in spite of serious threats to adaptation or development” (p. 228). Garmezy (1991) considers the intelligence level of an individual and ability to possess the mind power to tackle an adverse situation as one pleases as the core characteristics of a resilient individual. Garmezy (1991) resiliency framework allows student affairs professionals is to examine the strengths of disadvantaged students who are faced with various life stressors, but

I believe resilience is a trait that I possess. It is defined as an attitude that enables the individual to examine, enhance, and utilize the strengths, characteristics, and other resources available to him (Harrington, 2012). There are several obstacles that could possibly come up during my academic course. As with any obstacle, determination is what will get you through the rough times.