Lecture Journal on Leisure - Essay Example

A Lecture Journal on Leisure Client Inserts His/her Name Client Inserts Grade Course Client Inserts Tutor’s Name 12/04/2012 WEEK 1; INTRODUCTION TO LEISURE This week was spent trying to define leisure and included figuring out what topics that one would have classified as leisure. We began by looking at a brief overview of leisure usage in day to day life before actually defining it. Personally, I learnt that defining leisure was not as simple as one would have thought and as different things are differently appreciated by different people, each person has a distinct understanding of leisure. Defined as free time, the lecture continued by emphasizing that it is equally difficult to determine what free time is. Various explanations drew to a conclusion that free time is the time left after work and other obligations. It was good to learn how to distinguish between ‘work and obligations’ and what would be safely termed as leisure. The bottom line remained that it is from a personal point of view that one may determine what leisure is. For example, a quite similar activity maybe work or obligation to one person while another person will view it as leisure. Every bit of the lecture became interesting every day, especially when it came to learning what are the components of leisure. The three basic components of leisure are freedom of choice, enjoyability and intrinsic motivation. To claim that one is really experiencing leisure, the three components must be available. For a particular leisure activity, one must own the capacity to make his or her choice freely after which, a sense of involvement will truly be felt. This is actually critical because each person has his own niche (Freysinger 1994). Having freely chosen a leisure activity, enjoyment is automatic. In short, a real leisure must be enjoyable. A leisure needs to be intrinsically motivating where a person will have happiness self appreciation and feel that he or she actually achieved or learnt something in the process, other than things like awards, certificates of participation or getting paid. WEEK 2; HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF LEISURE This week’s lecture focused on the development of leisure in the recent past. The study helps to trace where our current perception of leisure may have evolved from. To tackle this subject, we looked into different societies’ take on leisure across different times in history; The Hunters-Gatherers Society: This society evolved at around 8000BCE and was characterized by division of labour where men and boys role was to hunt for meat while women were left behind to care for the children. The society had no work and leisure clearly differentiated. To be precise, there was no meaning of leisure. The Greek: At around 500BC was a period of civilization with the emergence of various intellects among different Greek community. These intellects had a class of their own having a lot of free time that was taken for leisure. Although selectively exercised, gradually leisure began to be perceived as a requirement in the society. The Romans: Like the Greeks, the Romans knew the essence of leisure. To the Romans, leisure was as important as it is today and it was primarily meant for rest and for recreation. Ancient China and India: In both the two countries, leisure was practiced early before 500BC. Leisure time was used to pass religious teachings. Industrial revolution: During the periods of industrial revolution, there was distinction between leisure and work. This occurred after the separation of work times allowing residual time for leisure. Leisure perception today: Today, leisure is perceived as part of daily life. I personally find it safe to say that each person needs free time. The modern forty-hour week for workers compared with the 19th century’s 70-hour week (Kelly & Freysinger 2000) suggest that nowadays leisure time is at workers disposal. WEEK3; BENEFITS OF LEISURE In this week, the study involved the benefits accrued after a person’s experience in a particular leisure activity. I added to my initially default liking and/or perception of the relevance of leisure time. The lecture took us through benefits include; physical, psychological, spiritual, social and economic benefits. I believe every person’s physical well being is a goal that he or she will certainly struggle to achieve. Leisure time allows one to choose among various activities that will enhance physical fitness. The nature of most jobs nowadays takes a form where a person sits in an office the whole day or sits in a car and drives the whole day. Special time needs to be spared for exercises that ultimately will add to physical fitness of such victims. I found psychological and spiritual benefits equally important. There is that feeling of freedom from daily chores and stressful working condition. Free time allowance from work among other obligations pays for itself by providing motivational grounds and refresh workers thus increasing their productivity (Shaw 1998). Socially, free time allows one to spare time for recreation, travelling and meeting people. This brings about social growth in a society and rules out social imbalances that are otherwise a threat to the entire populations’ relations. The economic value of leisure time to any society is not one to leave behind. If you consider the cost undergone to access various recreational amenities in just your neighbourhood, and remembering that when you pay for these amenities you are contributing to your national economic growth, you will certainly appreciate the economic value that emanate from leisure activities worldwide. WEEK 4; SELF ESTEEM AND STRESS During this week, the lecture guided us to a deeper understanding of how leisure facilitates psychological health. This was done by elaborating the linkages between two psychological aspects of humans - self esteem and stress – and leisure, clearly showing how leisure can be of help towards controlling the latter two. Self esteem is your opinion of yourself. High self esteem is a good opinion of yourself and low self esteem is a bad opinion of yourself. Low self esteem is destructive and determines chances of success in one’s life. Ability to express oneself is crucial. Think about how people react when it is your turn to address an audience. Most people will certainly be affected by the outcome. Taking time out for a leisure activity has high chance of shaping one’s self esteem. Many a time, a particular leisure activity will be conducted alongside a partner or a mate. Repeated interaction with such people has had record of transforming self-view of many people. Low self esteem has led to failure of the victims to participate in leisure activities especially where it involves several participants. Stress is a feeling of anxiety or tension. A person under stress lacks self control, becomes irritable and shows a giving-up and withdrawal symptoms. There comes a tendency to take self destructive moves in an attempt to restore the original status. Leisure activities most of which take a social dimension often become helpful to curb or to lessen stress. Mere experience in a social gathering, a movie theatre for instance, keeps you away from a life-threatening stress. WEEK 5; LEISURE PATTERNS IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY; THE LEISURE INDUSTRIES This week’s lecture specifically focused on the leisure industry. The major aspects of the leisure industry which include step wise development and evolvement of leisure industry for the last two centuries, the major sources of leisure activities (who provides them and where to find them) and the dynamics of these activities, were critically analyzed. Australia was the country of focus. Major pattern of leisure in history Between 1788 and 1851 was an era of long hours of work in Australia. However, there existed leisure episodes which largely took the form of community theatres and sports like cockfighting and boxing among others. These activities were almost entirely attended by men and were not fully socially accepted. Later, between 1851 and 1901, free time other than that of work was added largely due to maturation of industrialization. This increased available time for leisure. As so, more leisure parks and recreational grounds were established and this meant emergency of other leisure activities. Still, some of the ancient activities like boxing were retained. The sports activities mainly remained masculine The period between 1902 and 1945 was marked by the emergence of World War I and World War II. During this time, large numbers of men were lost and remained in battle fields and this left sporting among other recreational activities entirely as a women practice. From 1945 onwards, a period of healing came with many sports with increasing technology and spectatorship mushroomed all over the country. Many people, rather than participating, became spectators. Currently, massive spectatorship and community theatres have been reduced to home theatres. This means that people in Australia spend much of their leisure time sitting down, and this accounts for the high obesity rates in the Country. References Shaw, S.M., 1998. Family Activities and Family Leisure, In Canadian Families, ed. L. C. Johnson. Toronto: Thompson. Kelly, J.R., & Freysinger, V.J., 2000. 21st Century Leisure: Current Issues. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon. Freysinger, V.J., 1994. Leisure with Children and Parental Satisfaction: Further Evidence of a Sex Difference in the Experience of Adult Roles and Leisure. Journal of Leisure Research 26, p. 212–226. Read More