Analysis Of Metropolis Mental Life By Simmel

UCLA students are highly interactive individuals that not only carry the role of being academic scholars but carry other responsibilities: such as employments, research positions, volunteering or are involved in additional social organizations. This type of behavior is a result of the culture of over-productivity that is present at UCLA, meaning students are expected of being efficiently productive and maximizing their time within the institution. In this setting that treats time as money, students are expected to always be engaged in some sort of activity that will increase their human capital and therefore make them more profitable for the professional sectors they will enter once they graduate. One way college students alleviate this stress …show more content…
In cities, there is a greater amount of activity occurring at every corner; making this into an intense environment that can cause feelings of mental overstimulation preventing individuals from focusing on their goals. In favor of overcoming this drawback, Simmel (1905) believes individuals develop a ‘blasé attitude’ in order of alleviating this tension they experience. He writes, “...the blasé attitude- in which the nerves reveal their final possibility of adjusting themselves to the content and the form of metropolitan life by renouncing the response to them” (Simmel, 1905, p.14). Through continuous and repetitive integration in these environments individuals stop paying attention to all the commotion and become desensitized to what once caused great …show more content…
Quarterly schedules, work, meetings, and any additional commitment can be tracked through calendars and agendas. Although the tools seem insignificant, they are essentials that helps students transform multiple stimulators into an organized chaos they are less triggered by then when they initially began their academic career. Simmel declares that these people whom developed a blasé mentality, “Instead of reacting emotionally, the metropolitan type reacts primarily in a rational manner, thus creating a mental predominance though the intensification of consciousness” (p.12). The application allows students to think rationally about the situations they are placed in instead of reacting in panic about how heavy their day to day is. Essentially, the application reduces the amount of stress students feel when they become a more active participant on campus because they now have some sort of plan that keeps them accountable and on track. Simmel’s concept of “Blasé attitude” explains how Microsoft outlook becomes a tool which helps students become more accustomed to the demands and lifestyle that is part and makes up UCLA