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Keane Ong
Stacc English 100
Professor Gabrielsson
October 1, 2014
Undercover Thinking
I feel that my identity as a student has been molded, developed and rebuilt over my many
years of being in school. All I can say about my identity is that I use metacognition on and off of
school. I have been using metacognition for so long that it has become something more than just
thinking. To me it is simpler than thinking it happens naturally with the occasional rethinking a
decision that I feel may have an easier, but more effective solution. Before, I used to make bad
decisions especially those that would get me into to serious trouble. Since then I decided to
change myself and it turned out better than I could have ever imagined. For me metacognition is
not just a way of thinking, it is more like a way of life that dictates all my decisions.
The first time I got in serious trouble was in sixth grade, because I was a cocky little
bastard to thought he was to cool for school. I was always the athletic person who loved anything
that involved physical activities, but when it came to studying I would always blow it off and
play games or play some basketball at a nearby park. That incident made me change my life as a
person at and away from school. That year I went from being a D average student to a solid C
student, but that was all I could manage from the remaining time as a sixth grader.
The way I thought that year was similar to a student from Erin Gruwells book The
Freedom Writers Diary. Im sitting here in the corner of the classroom, looking at my schedule

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and thinking is this where Im supposed to be (8)? In my mind I thought the same way. I always
felt like I was put into the class that was filled with students who needed more help with English
even though I had more knowledge in English than most people in the other classes. I soon
realized that I did not have a choice, because my parents had listed my primary language at home
as Chinese even though I barely spoke at home. I basically thought that way my entire middle
school life that if I worked hard in class that I would be rewarded by being put in the class that
was not solely focused on English. So then by the time I got close to sixth grade I had already
given up. This was when I had not been using metacognition in the way that I think.
The following years I started doing better in school. I started getting a B average which I
was pretty proud of at the time since I knew I could have been getting straight As. It was not
until I started high school I had become really shy and my conscience was stopping me from
embarrassing myself. Besides my conscience the way I thought also played a huge role in my
first few days of freshman year. Although I stuck with my conscience to stick with my friends
from middle school, we eventually met some people through common friends and merged into
bigger groups. Metacognition had been playing a huge role in my conscience it was always
questioning my motives and my actions which eventually made me many new friends.
Later that year I realized when I joined the swim team it involved a lot of concentration
involving metacognition. I was always questioning which swimming stroke I was best at, how I
could improve on those strokes and what kind of form I should stick with. Although I researched
a lot on swimming, it did not really help me get better I was stuck. Along the way my seniors had
told me to try out water polo. At the time I had no idea what kind of sport water polo was so I
decided to give it a shot next year during the tryouts, but it wasnt until I tried it to figure out I
loved the sport. My time as a water polo played helped me with my metacognition, because I

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was forced to make decisions on the spot with very few seconds. At one point during the year my
friends that were in the yearbook staff asked me to interview my coaches for them and one of the
questions was When you are coaching a game how do you want your team to play? and his
response was I expect to play smart by passing the ball around, exploiting small advantages in
setups and taking smart shots. It was then that I realized that my decision making slowly made
me into a better team player.
One of the few things I was able to do while playing water polo make good passes. I
wasnt that great in many things due to my small frame, but I did what I could and that helped
me figure out what I did best. Although I had no skill in making great shots, I was superb on
defense and used my spectacular vision to make great passes to my teammates that were open for
a great shot. Only once in my career as a water polo player in high school did I achieve
something great. It happened when I got a player on the other team ejected, so we got ourselves a
power play which was a 6 on 5. We had this setup where we always had one player that would
be open and that player happened to be me. So when I had got the ball I had pumped it several
times before my head just started going in slow motion I saw an opening in the opponents
defense and took the shot. The shot slid right past 2 defenders and the goalies arms and I was
extremely happy that it went exactly how I wanted it to. To this day that slow motion in my head
was probably a way of metacognition working, telling me what path I should throw the ball
towards. Since then I started applying metacognition to my life outside of school.
Following probably the highlight of my life came the worst part of my life. It started right
before the fall semester at Pasadena City College; I had just finished a math course over the
second half of summer there. I was ready to start choosing my classes; then I was getting errors
all over the place when I tried to add multiple classes, particularly math and English. It kept

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telling me restricted so I tried looking for other classes and there were very few options to pick
from. At that time, my mind had underwent and immense amount of stress and at that point my
metacognition was giving up and telling me screw college, why the hell does it even exist. To me
it relates to a short reading in Donald McQuade and Robert Atwans The Writers Presence. The
reading was from Barry Schwartz, in his essay he told us of a research that clearly portrayed my
current condition at the time. He states My colleagues and I, along with other researchers, have
begun amassing evidence- both in the laboratory and in the field- that increased choice and lead
to decreased well-being (801). He basically states that too many choices in life, especially
college courses. To many students, that increased amount in choice of classes and professors
teaching the course leads to a lot of stress. I have felt that exact same way, I was so unsure of
what kind of professor I should pick. Should I pick easy or hard, lots of homework or very little
homework and also what class time should I pick? These were all the questions my
metacognition had to decide in such little time that I was losing confidence in my decision
making and my knowledge.
To this day I am glad I choose the English class I am in or I probably would have never
learned what metacognition was. I always thought it was just my conscience, but now I know the
difference between the two. One only tells me should I have the courage to stand up and speak to
the world and the other is the decision making on how I should make that speech and what I
should avoid while doing it.
Metacognition has always had a major impact on my life without me ever noticing that I
was always using it consciously and unconsciously. It is something that will always continue to
grow and it will eventually be my greatest weapon when a zombie apocalypse breaks out and
everyone needs to start fending off the zombies themselves and their families.

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Work Cited
Gruwell, Erin: The Freedom Writers Diary. New York: Broadway Books, 2009. Print
Lopez, Adrian. Personal Interview. 5 September, 2013.
Schwartz, Barry. The Tyranny of Choice. The Writers Presence. Ed. Robert Atwan. Boston:
Bedford/ St. Martins, 2011. 800-807. Print.