Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Everyone I know would be surprised that... (I know this is supposed to be at the end but I forgot about it)

In my classes, I am usually one of the people that sits back and listens to what everyone else has to say because I am "shy." How I am in class is a situational identity, however, this identity is not shyness. People in my classes would be surprised to know that my not speaking up in class is more a protection I've created for myself because I fear saying something embarrassing or unintelligent. I have this constant insecurity about my intelligence which I've had since I came to college. Though there are instances where I may start off shy in my interactions with a person or group, I would not label myself as a very shy person. There are often times in class when we are asked a question or requested to think about something and I feel a strong urge to share, but I have played a part for so long that I can't step out of it. It is like I have fooled myself into thinking I really am a shy person.
My not speaking also has a lot to do with the people who are in my classes. I feel more free to speak aloud in class when I do not know anyone, as strange as that may sound. I think this is because if I don't know the person, I won't have to worry about being ridiculed outside of class for saying something dumb because my interactions with those people end when class is over. Also, there may be one person who, for some reason, intimidates me and that is enough for me to keep my mouth shut an entire semester in class.

This has to do with self-esteem issues that I posses which exist for no other reason other than that I am my biggest critic. I have always received encouragement from others, and I cannot recall any instances or past experiences that have greatly influenced my lack of self-esteem in this area.

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

I would like to thank...and blame, all the people who have made me who I am!

I don’t believe I have anyone to blame for who I am because even my faults are things that make me the person I am thankful to be. If I could, I would thank my high school youth leader for showing me the full picture of Christianity and not cutting out the things people don’t want to hear. She showed me who God was and was someone who led me to find my own faithful path.
In only the past three years, the people who I can thank for making me who I am today are numerous. The individuals involved in our campus’s Town and Gown organization who believed in me enough to give me a scholarship two years in a row deserve a huge thanks; Claudia Ingram who pushed for me to speak up in class and made me realize that my opinions matter; Debbie White who is my boss in Alumni Relations, but more importantly, is my mother away from home. She always knows when something is wrong without me even saying a word. I would like to thank Marilyn Engstrom for helping me find a major that I love and teaching me to “question everything.”
Lastly, there are the people in my family who have made me who I am. I would like to thank my brother Josh and my sister-in-law Veronica for truly showing me that family is everything. They have been there for me in the past and I know that they will be there for me in the future. I would also thank my mother for understanding me in a way that no other person does. I would like to thank her for never making me feel poorly for getting a C in a class or on a test when she knew I was trying my hardest. She accepts me for who I am and who I am not and she lets me know that I make her proud just being myself. Finally, I would like to thank my father. He passed away three years ago, but I take after him in so many ways. Not only do I resemble him through my physical features, I have the same optimistic personality, (for the most part), that he had. I am also easy going and I love to laugh. My father was a big kid and would do anything to get a laugh. He would also do anything for me and my sister. He would stay up all night helping us with school assignments and projects. When we had pages and pages of reading to do and were too tired to keep going, he would read aloud to us in bed. When we were young he would spend $20 trying to grab a bear from a claw machine in a restaraunt as we waited to be seated, just to make my sister and I smile. Even when money was tight, he always made sure we had enough money to go to a movie together…and enough money for popcorn. It was impossible to embarrass him, but he sure loved embarrassing other people (like my sister, brother and myself). Some of these things I have inherited from him; others are just good memories, but these memories are what help me get through every day that he is not around and they have become a part of me. I sometimes question whether the similarities I find between my father and myself are simply me being like him in a subconscious way, or if it is me trying to be like him because I love who he was and this helps me keep him alive.

All of the above people showed me compassion and love when they were willing to put their faith in me. Their positive influence on me has motivated me to try and be a positive influence on as many people as I can, and sometimes this influence is just smiling at someone when they pass by. The individuals discussed above have also contributed to my social and personal identities. John P. Hewitt writes, “People develop a sense of themselves as whole beings (integration) acting purposefully and effectively in their social world (continuity) by developing forms of identity that transcend the particular situation” (2007, 102). These forms of identity that Hewitt speaks of are social and personal identity. All of the above contribute to my life story (Hewitt 2007, 103); these people have made me think about my future and have challenged me to work hard so to succeed on levels I did not know were possible for myself. Because, in my years at Redlands, I have been integrated into a lifestyle of success (academically and in extracurricular activities), I continue to hold myself to higher expectations that transcend my life as a college student.

Of course my communities have had some effect on me...

When I think about the communities that have influenced me, I first think of my community in junior high and high school. Being White, I was a minority in my school community. I think this was a good experience for me. I feel that while the education systems at the public schools I attended were not the best, the experience and exposure I got from the vast diversity have hindered prejudices or fears from developing in me which many other people have.

Though I went to school with a diverse group of people, my close friends were always White. Looking back, I guess the reason was that this was just the first instinct- to find the people who are similar to you. So, while my school community was diverse, my immediate community was not at all and this widened the gap between myself and those of other races. Because most of my friends stood out with their blond hair and blue eyes, we did not blend in easily which typified us as stuck up (something I don’t think I am at all) (Hewitt 2007, 150). In regards to why I stuck with only my White friends, it was a feeling of security in a place with so many people that were unlike my self. Perhaps this is an aligning action- me trying to make sense out of actions that are unclear to me; perhaps I am making an excuse. Andy Bennet writes in her book, "Culture and Everyday Life," about how people place themselves into communities based on such things as fashion (what people wear), and music; in "My Freshman Year," Rebekah Nathan also talks about the grouping of people (as she investigates them in the cafeteria). All emphasize that people place themselves in communities that make them comfortable, which, many times, is placeing themselves aroung people who are similar to themselves.

My religious community has had a huge impact on me. I was raised in a small Lutheran church, the same church my father grew up in. Every Sunday my family and I went to church and my sister and I went to Sunday school. I still remember the lessons I learned in Sunday school and I know for a fact that as a child, I would implement these lessons into my own life. The story of David and Goliath reminded me that while I was of small stature for my age, I could still accomplish a great amount. Though accomplishing a great amount was at the time winning in activities at recess, the idea was still present. I remember another time one of my Sunday school teachers talking about kids who get picked on or left out and how we need to stand up for those people and show kindness towards them. The next week at recess when I was voted to be a team captain and had to pick teams, I chose the one girl who was always picked last and I still remember the look on her face when I said her name.
When I was going into my freshmen year of high school I decided to make the personal decision to become a Christian and since then, I have been constantly striving to stay on the right path with God. As a Christian, I make sure to have a group of Christian friends close to me, not that all my friends are or should be Christians, but because so much of my life revolves around my faith, there are some things that only those friends can truly understand. When I enter into new relationships, it is always difficult for me to bring up my faith, because there are so many negative images of religion. I do not want to be associated with the negative things that may have come from the church, though these things are all that most people remember. Hewitt says that "identification with a particular community is also a way of differentiating oneself from people who are not members. In many instances, social identity establishes a sense of difference that looks on others with pit, condemnation, avoidance, or even violence." (2007, 104). This is exactly what I do not want people thinking I do or feel. For this reason, I wait to deeply share about my being a Christian and what that means to me until I am at a solid place in my relationships with particular individuals. I don't like just saying I'm a Christian without being able to have a conversation as to why and how I view my faith.


My family is the most influential community in my life. It may not have always been like this, but after my father passed away, my surviving family seemed to have picked up on what is truly important in life. We know the importance of family and we know that we need to make time for one another. We know that when someone else is in the family is in need, we will give. It is really easy to get caught up in things in life that, when you think of the big picture, really don’t matter. People put money, material items, significant others, etc. over their own family and don’t realize that these things are all things that will fade away. My family is always in my mind. It is for them that I am working so hard in my studies and in my extracurricular passions. I want to make them proud and I want them to benefit from my successes.
As I am writing this, I now have begun to wonder what it is that makes blood ties so strong.

If we choose to refer to community as the generalized other, (the imagined perspectives of other people in a society[Hewitt 2007, 75]) I could speak for days on the influences this has had on me. The generalized other influences my everyday actions, from what I wear to how I conduct myself. The influences of the generalized other are so powerful on/in me that I do not think I can clearly distinguish between what is truly me and what I think is me but has been influenced by the generalized other.

There are a lot of different parts of who I am and this is how I see them...

There are so many parts to who I am. I know because when I am in certain situations I can be really shy and timid while in other situations I am outgoing. In some situations I have to be constantly telling jokes and clowning around, while other times I am fine being entertained by others. I can see the different parts of my self most clearly when I make transitions from school to home. In Redlands I am very dedicated to my work. I get up early and stay up late just to get my studies done. I do an immense amount of community service and I am constantly making plans for my future. When I go home, which I do at least once a month, I fall into a different kind of person. My future plans of changing the world move to plans to go to cosmetology school or work at a salon. These are not bad careers and I still think they would be entertaining, but with all of the hard work and money I’ve put into my education and the emotional dedication I’ve made to helping others, I can’t imagine not utilizing them. I also become lazy and find it difficult to complete even the smallest tasks while at home. I also become more interested in shopping and buying the latest fashions. I still don’t really understand why I change so dramatically when I move from school to home. I think that the way I get when I’m at home is a result of me moving back into the person I was in high school. I have learned and grown so much since I’ve come to college, but when at home, I fall into other people’s perceptions and expectations of me. They don’t know all the work I have done in college; they don’t know of my accomplishments, and so, they ultimately don’t know me, as these things have made me who I am right now.

But is this the real me? I know that the person I am when away at school is the person I would prefer to be, but what if the person I am while at home is the “real me?” In this case, would I be happier working at a salon? Maybe I need to just accept that both of these parts are truly me. Again, I go back to questioning myself when I feel that there is more than one true self. If I just accept that fact that there is a multiphrenic self, how then will it be possible to make the right decision for something like a career path? Our consistent denial of the multiphrenic self has to do with our need to organize and plan.

I thought I was a certain kind of person, until (this life changing event happened)

I believe the closest I have come to experiencing a true self was when I traveled to New Orleans to do Hurricane Katrina relief work. I have never been so at peace and so real. I was free from almost all media influences, with the exception of the radio which we listened to when driving to our work sites. While I was there I did not wear any make-up and I wore my worst jeans and t-shirts with work boots. I did not feel self-conscious at all (which would have definitely not been the case back home). Going to New Orleans and seeing the immense destruction and hearing people’s stories about how their lives had been so drastically changed really put things into perspective for me. No longer did it matter what my outward appearance was. No longer did I feel constrained to act a certain way and not in other ways for the sake of impressing others. I realized how much of a waste of time it was to put on a show for other people, especially for those so removed from my life, though so many of us put on the best shows for these people. For once…I just was.
As we entered this different world- a world of broken dreams, no running businesses, no people on the roads or sidewalk, no electricity, no running water, and FEMA trailers for those who were lucky- we seemed to have gotten quite confused. Over the week-long trip, many student’s made comments like, “I can’t wait to get back to the real world.” I admit to saying and thinking this myself, yet as the days went by, I realized more and more how this world we were in was more real than any world I had ever been in. I don’t know what is more real than people in need, than nature at its worst, than life, and better yet, than death. This was the real world. The “world” we knew that existed at home- a world of comfort from having a roof over head, living family members, television, hot showers, and People magazine- was a false reality.
As much as the New Orleans trip focused on helping others, I feel that the trip ultimately became largely focused on myself as well. In New Orleans I grew tremendously as an individual. I learned a level of compassion and understanding that I never new existed within myself. I learned how to do things selflessly. I learned that in a matter of seconds all the material things I value could be gone. I learned that in a second, the people I love can be taken from me. Ultimately, I learned where my priorities lie and it was not in my possessions.

I guess my experience in New Orleans could be labeled as a "carnivalesque" expereience (Bennett 2005, 148). As Bennett writes, as taken from Bakhtin, a carnivalesque experience (as it relates to tourism) is " a means through which individuals can temporarily reinvent themselves, playig with identities and engaging in forms of 'carnivalesque' behaviour impermissible in their normal everyday lives" (148). My not caring about fashion or material possessions, my enjoying working 9 hour days in the grossest and most unsanitary environment imaginable would be thought of as "impermissible in...normal everyday lives."

Sometimes I don't really know who I am.

Though I thought I had realized a trueness about myself in New Orleans which had been unclear to me prior to the trip, there was a problem. The problem was that I was not going to remain in New Orleans forever. While I learned so much about life and compassion through my work in Louisiana, I was unable to maintain the feeling of realness individually as my environment changed. No longer was I surrounded by people thankful for just being alive. I was now in the land of materialism and consumerism, and gradually my insecurities came back to me. I was unable to maintain this sense of realness when immersed back into “real” modern society.

The quest to finding out who I am has been a struggle of mine mostly since I started college. When I was a senior in high school, I thought I knew exactly who I was. When I got to college, I lost that. I was forced to move out of my box I had created for myself. Not only had I just lost my father, but I had now moved away from my family to a place where no one knew me. Following that, my boyfriend from home broke up with me. All of these things I lost had all been a part of my identity as I knew it, so it makes sense that I was a little confused about myself. Since then, I have worked to reconstruct my self, but because I feel that I have so many parts to my self that my self self is not true. This is assuming that there is one true self, which is an idea that I haven’t been able to let go of.
While many things are always changing, the part of my self (who I am) that is constantly stable is that I am a Christian and I am a daughter. The rest is unknown. I wonder if we ever truly know who we are since we are all constantly changing. I know that in a year I won’t be the same person I am today. But even though people are constantly changing, there has to be something that is stable and remains the same (or something they think is staying the same).

I think that people’s need for stability is so interesting. I know that I have to have some sort of stability in my life. I’m a planner and I cannot plan when everything is in question.
It is also easier for me to know who I am (or think I know who I am) when things are going right and I have a positive mindset. When things start going wrong I sometimes start to get depressed and it is then that I start questioning everything about myself. I then get confused because I don’t know if when I am in my positive mindset I am just fooling myself into thinking I have everything sorted out, or if the darker side of me is how I really feel about who I am (or who I am not).

I feel like I'm "only performin" when...

I believe that people perform blatantly, but that many put on performances subconsciously as well. For example, if a person is trying to impress an individual of the opposite sex, he/she will imagine what the other person would be interested in or would find attractive, and the person trying to impress will act towards those things **READING. Everyone has hit on someone at least once before. Also, there are performances people do while on job interviews that are planned out ahead of time, but there are also performances that are expected based on the roles of the individuals in that specific setting. Many people put on performances to live up to other peoples expectations, or at least to appear to be living up to those expectations.
I wonder if we are ever free from performing. To an extent, I think that I am always performing, though sometimes I put on larger performances than others. Even around people I feel very comfortable with, I hold back to some extent. I don’t think that there is a person I know who I can 100% withold performing for and just be myself, whoever that may be. Even further, I feel that many people perform to and for themselves. We often try to trick ourselves into believing we are a certain type of person. For example, a person does not put aside enough time to do an assignment for class, but tells him/herself that he/she had no time because he/she was busy doing so many other things. This may be true, but we don’t remind ourselves that half of those things were done as a way to procrastinate and their getting done was not crucial or necessary at all. We then say that we were “soooo busy” so to not feel that we are failures, bad students, or incapable. SELF ESTEEM***

O.K., so maybe I am not so "special," but I am unique.

What’s the difference between being special and being unique? I think that specialness is something that people seek out, while uniqueness is something that exists within/among a person without actively trying to get it. (See "How I am becoming a celebrity")
On this note, I feel that the things that make me unique are characteristics that I was born with or have arisen in me without me actually working to get them. I am unique in my compassion. For a long time I thought that compassion was something that everyone had, but I have found this untrue. Multiple people have approached me about the work I have done in New Orleans in Katrina relief efforts. They wonder how I could give up my Spring Break and May Break to go do such hard and dirty work. Some people are those who made one trip to New Orleans and couldn’t figure out why I went back again, and then again. To be honest, it was something I never thought twice about. I didn’t understand how people could NOT go. I think this is what makes me unique.

I like the idea I am continually changing because...

There is nothing physical or material that endures time without change. Though consistency is often times more comfortable in its predictability, there is something exciting about not knowing what the future holds. I think back to my freshman year and can see how I moved from being a person with zero on-campus involvement, zero-community involvement, zero leadership positions, and very little faith that I could achieve much of anything at a four year college. Now, I am a director for the Big Buddies program, I am the Community Service chair for Mortar Board, I am the Service VP for Alpha Phi Omega, I am involved in Maroon and Grey, I am a member of Fellowship of Christian Athletes, I have received a Town and Gown scholarship two years in a row, and have been asked to speak in front of hundreds of people to share part of my story and experiences.
What amazes me most about these accomplishments and honors is how so many of them have nothing to do with me. Almost all of them are a result of someone else’s faith in my capabilities that I could not see for myself. My being a director for Big Buddies is a precise example of this. After the abrupt departure of one of the directors of the program my junior year, I was called into the CSL office and was asked how I would like to be one of the directors. I could not believe that they were asking me to take on such an important and honorable job. Of course I said that I would love nothing more than to hold such a foundational role in the program; But, never would I have applied under the normal circumstances to become a director. I did not see the potential in myself to be a leader for such a large and influential program. Had the other directors and advisors not have pointed out how well I was performing in the program and if they had not addressed their vision of my potential, I would not be the leader I am today. I am so grateful for the opportunity they made available to me.
It is for this reason why I think it is extremely important to let people know when they are doing well at something. So many people are blind to their strengths, blessings, talents, and abilities. Addressing a person’s potential can change their lives by opening new doors of possibilities for them.
Simply over the past three years I have become an almost entirely different person. I cannot wait to see how I will change as I move into different relationships, start/ choose a career, start a family, etc. Though I have ideas of where I would like to end up and how I would like things to go, I cannot admit that I know where I will be or will go in the future, but it is this fact that intrigues me.

I really hate it when people think of me as (your most stereotyped self)...

I think people who do not know me well think that I am very secure, perhaps to the point of being stuck up. I asked my friend what he thought of me before he knew me and he said that he thought I just had better things to do than to talk to someone like him. He also said that I appeared somewhat introverted and oblivious. I would say that I am at times also stereotyped as ditzy.
I find it funny that people who don’t know me think I am secure, because nothing is more wrong. I am constantly questioning myself, from the way I walk to how I dress to the words I say. I believe that I am a very good performer and I am constantly performing the role that projects an image of “I know what I’m doing,” but I don’t mean for this performance to make me unapproachable or overly secure. It is my way of projecting what I feel I should be projecting. I find this somewhat ironic.
In terms of my being oblivious and ditzy, I know that I am stereotyped this way because I play up to these stereotypes. I found out freshman year of college that if I act ditzy and oblivious to things, there is less room for me to fall short of people's expectations. This way, if I do or say something stupid, people won't be surprised; however, if I say or do something intelligent, they will. It seemed like a fail proof system. I quickly realized how sad it was that I was cutting myself down so low. Of all the people who cut others down, this was the last thing I needed to be doing to myself.
I have, in the past, been positively stereotyped as "perfect." For a long time people didn't see any of my faults because I did so well at hiding them. As already mentioned, I am a great performer. Though being perfect was a positive stereotype, I view it as more negative because it sets a person on a pedestal with nowhere to go but down.

How I Am Becoming A Celebrity

Many people daydream about being famous rock stars or movie actors, but sometimes, similar desires are more subtle in their pursuit to achieve celebrity. I am planning on continuing my education and attending grad school for social work. While I don’t know of many famous social workers, something I would really love to do would be to work for Extreme Makeover: Home Edition to help with the selection process, working directly with the families as well as taking part in the physical labor. Now, I’m sure I can do this same kind of work with various other organizations throughout the US, however, I feel the deepest passion to pursue the work that is shown on TV. Perhaps this is because it may seem the most influential since it is broadcasted throughout the nation, or it may be my personal desire to become a celebrity.
There are other ways people become celebrities. Even on campus, many people work to obtain a name for him/herself. Is it for popularity? In our specific career fields, we all wish to be successful, and part of this success has to do with how well we are known among others inside our field and out. What is this need/desire to want to be known? Obviously, no one wants to be forgotten when alive and even so after they have died. Ironically, some people don’t achieve celebrity until they are deceased.

Much of people's longing for celebrity has to do specialness. Hal Niedzviecki writes, "More and more people want to be special and noticed, and we want to create bigger, better narratives, but our approach is to imitate established practices like televised wrestling" (8). The media has much to do with the growing need for celebrity. Mr. N continues by saying, "One must, always, be more than what one is, constantly reinventing, constantly announcing" (10). Like on television, if the same material is used for too long, people eventually change the channel and are no longer interested. Whether it be on television, as a student, as a son/daughter, as a club president, or as an employee, no one wants their channel to be changed. If a person is an employee who is a great worker but never goes out of his/her way to be noticed or to overachieve, he/she will never recieve the acknowledgment that is needed to make a person feel special. So, people pursue celebrity to feel special; thus, celebrity has a lot to do with a person's self-esteem.

In chapter 4 or Niedzviechi's work he writes about a therapist named Karyn Gordon. "Gordon lists the three essentials for positive self-esteem: (1)Stop blaming others for your problems; (2) start setting realistic goals, and (3) start seeking positive influences" (97). Gordon is essentially saying that people need to tak repsonsibility for themselves and for their happiness. The celebrity mindset is very distructive, becasue it leaves people thinking, "I could do that if I really wanted to." This is done as an attempt to maintain self-esteem --telling one's self that they are capable but yet they never get up and do something. It creates a false sense of achievement and leaves people with being okay where they are at. This can account for all that is wrong within our society, government, and nation; As long as we know we could rise above the social structure, we are fine not changing anything.

Acheiving celebrity has to do with social identity. Hewitt writes, Social identity is accomplished when announcements and placements coincide" (2007, 105). Celebrity cannot be achieved apart from social interactions and other people acknowledging a person as a celebrity or having potential to be one. So many people talk aout how they are sick and tired of hearing about Britney Spears, yet, according to Hewitt and symbolic interationists, she is still in the spotlight because we keep her there (we place her there). People continue to buy the People magazines with her picture on the cover, people tune in on television when there is a breaking story about her, and people continue to buy her music. This means that the people we call celebrities are a direct reflection of people in society.
What about those people who become famous after they have passed? This has been the case for many artists. Would this be an acception to Hewitt's statement? The announcement such artists were making when alive did not have placement. When dead, there was no actual announcement being made, yet there was placement. Perhaps this is because the absense of physical presence is not a requirement to making an announcement. The work itself (paintings and such) makes an announcement.

Citations

Bennet, Andy. Culture and Everyday Life. Sage Publications, 2005.

Hewitt, John P. Self in Society: A Symbolic Interactionist Social Psychology. Tenth ed. Boston Pearson Education, 2007.

Nathan, Rebekah. My Freshman Year. New York, Penguin Books, 2005.

Niedzviecki, Hal. Hello, I'm Special: How Individuality Became The New Conformity. San Francisco, First City Lights edition, 2006.