EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE SUMMARY By: Joseph Barb             Daniel Goleman's book is an attempt to prove how much emotional intelligence is important to one's life. Emotions are in our everyday life and effect us in many ways. Goleman gives examples of situations where emotions were involved and with each situation he states facts or a true life story. What I liked the most about Emotional Intelligence would have to be the stories that he used and the situations that I could relate to.        The story that first caught my attention was the opening lines of chapter one. A true story of the love of two parents for their daughter. They sacrificed their lives to get their daughter out of the train that had crashed into a river. As the water rushed into the train, they pushed their daughter through a window to rescuers. The car then sank and the girl's parents perished. This story emphasizes the emotion, love, and how strong it can be. Goleman also stresses that parental sacrifice has been repeated countless times in human history and prehistory, and countless more in the larger course of evolution of our species (Goleman: 3). I believe that the emotion, love, can be strong. If it is true love like the love of raising a child, to see the phases the child goes through, and to want that child to move on in life to experience more, then I believe that one could sacrifice their life for another's life.        As I continued to read and get bored by the scientific talk of the brain, I came across chapter two and I could kind of relate to the emotional hijacking that Goleman describes. I was about thirteen and just got out of middle school. It was the summer time and my friends and I got together at the regular place. Except this time its not the regular talk or the regular working out or the regular playing basketball. The subject of forming a gang was on some of my older friend's minds. The ones that already were in high school and were telling us how it was. They talked of forming a gang and instead of jumping people in we would just burn ourselves to symbolize the unity of our gang. The burn would be made with a lighter that was held on its side or upside down until the flame had made the metal hot, then you would press it against your skin and it would make a happy face if done right. Some of them had it already and were trying to get the rest to do it. That is where my emotional hijacking took place. Me being the smallest one, the one to always get picked on, and the one that everyone would never expect to come forward, spoke up and said I will. Right then and there I did unknowingly what I would later regret for the rest of my life. As they heated up the lighter, I took it and pressed it against the upper left side of my chest. As it burned into my skin I just pressed harder waiting for it to cool down. I was now branded for life with a scar that would remind me forever of that time I made that choice.        Jason H., a sophomore and straight-A student at a Coral Springs, Florida, high school, was fixated on getting into medical school. Not just any medical school--he dreamt of Harvard. But Pologruto, his physics teacher, had given Jason an 80 on a quiz. Believing the grade--a mere B--put his dream in jeopardy, Jason took a butcher knife to school and, in a confrontation with Pologruto in the physics lab, stabbed his teacher in the collarbone before being subdued in a struggle (Goleman: 33). This is the opening story for the third chapter of his book. This is a story that brings up the question, how could someone of such obvious intelligence do something so irrational? The answer that Goleman gives is that academic intelligence has little to do with emotional life. I believe in this theory. I believe that no matter how academically intelligent you are if you can't deal with everyday situations and emotions in life then you will not live a happy, healthy life.        Another example that Goleman gives that I believe is true is about why men are so self-conscious about there ego and pride. He states it started when they were young growing up. When girls play together, they do so in small, intimate groups, with an emphasis on minimizing hostility and maximizing cooperation, while boys' games are in larger groups, with an emphasis on competition. One key difference can be seen in what happens when games boys or girls are playing get disrupted by someone getting hurt. If a boy who has gotten hurt gets upset, he is expected to get out of the way and stop crying so the game can go on. Kind of like when the guys use to say, "Come on be a man." If the same happens among the group of girls, the game stops while everyone gathers around to help the girl who is crying (Goleman: 131-132). I guess that is the reason why guys worry about their pride and how they can't be seen crying so they hold in their emotions while the girls would cry and let their emotions out.        I could relate to chapter thirteen because I myself know how a trauma that happened in your life can just engrave a memory into your mind. Every second of the trauma is just etched in your memory like a movie in slow motion. You can remember the little details that usually you wouldn't pay attention to.        I have a memory of a car accident that I was in. It was during the summer after my sophomore year of high school. I went with four other friends to Astroworld in Houston. We spent the day down there and decided to drive back when it was dark. My friend driving, a girl, was blasting some oldies while we flew down the road heading back to our homes in Killeen. She was getting excited and loved the bumps on the road so my friend in the passenger seat said floor it. So there we were flying down on these backroads going about 120 miles per hour. It was dark so we couldn't see a certain distance in front of us. We came up to a curve that went to the left. The driver panicked and jerked the wheel while taking the curve at about 100 miles per hour. I could feel the car spinning around on the road and the rubber burning. Then I could feel us in the grass spinning more. I could smell the grass and dirt as the car carved its tracks into the ground. Right then and there I could remember me thinking to myself praying that the car would just stop and we could drive off. While time seemed to be in slow motion, things just popped up in my mind. I thought about my life, my friends, my parents, and the seat belt that I didn't have on. I was only sixteen and had a whole life ahead of me. Then I realized the car was starting to flip. After about three and a half rotations it stopped upside down. I didn't think about anything now except for getting out of the car and making sure everyone else could too. As I yelled for everyone to get out I opened my door and crawled out. I looked to make sure that everyone else was alright. Thank God, everyone was.        The next thing that I could think about is how people go through accidents like that and then realize later that they had lost a ligament. I searched myself to make sure I had all of mine. Then I saw some blood on my finger and panicking I double checked myself, I then looked at each of my friends and checked them. I then realized that it was just a cut on my finger. As the girls panicked and cried, me and my other friend, a guy, did the manly thing and stayed calm. As I stood there and just looked at the car, I thought about how lucky we all were, especially me. I was the only one not wearing a seat belt and I was the least hurt. I don't even know what I did in the time that the car was flipping. As each car that drove by pulled over or drove by slowly to see what happened, the ambulance and police came. The worst thing of all is through all that, we all decided to come up with a story that we were going 75 miles per hour and we all were wearing our seat belt. I guess it was the fear of the consequences that led us to do such a thing.        I can agree with Goleman when he states that emotional literacy programs improve children's academic achievement scores and school performance (Goleman: 284). Goleman proves that his studies of this theory have improved the lives of some children. I believe that if all around the world in every school if children were being taught how to be emotionally intelligent, this world could be able to live with less violence and crimes. Goleman's book is a step to being emotionally intelligent and with me reading this book I believe I can be somewhat intelligent when it comes to my emotions.