Hey everyone. It's Ashley
So how did your "identity experiments" turn out? Was it difficult to stay in character? Did any of your friends, teachers, or classmates notice your change in personality? SHARE YOUR EXPERIENCES! We will probably discuss this in class, but I think it is important that we share on the blog as well. Sometimes it's easier to express yourself in writing.
Well, I'm dieing to share how my day went. In case you didn't notice, I was a "germophob." I even had my own germ-killing-kit. I carried disinfectant wipes, kleenexes, purel, oust air sanitizer, and a lint roller. I avoided human contact as much as possible; I wouldn't hug my friends, open doors for other peole (germy door handles) or even sit down at my desk before I had disinfected it.
My friends definitely noticed my change in behavior and questioned it, but they accepted my explanation: "I know mono is going around and I can't afford to miss three weeks of school." (To really make my character believable I needed to change my behavior patterns as well as my speech - Language and Thought in Action!) Some of my friends even thought that my extra-caution was a good idea and asked that I wipe down their desks as well. Other classmates (people I wasn't as friendly with) gave me dirty looks and teased my mercilessly. It was extremly difficult to not break from character. I wanted desperatly to tell them that it was all just an act. I guess this is just the sacrifice you're supposed to make for your art. I completly sympathize with Pirandello's characters, because I realized today how difficult it is to not be able to break from your "script".
Now, the real questions. If it was difficult for you to be somebody else, does that mean that you have a compulsive desire to be accepted by your peers? In the end, we all just want to be validated but how far are we willing to go (or not go) to achieve this validation? If your friends noticed your giant mood swing today and said something, was it because they care about you or because they care about a certain version of you. WHAT DO YOU THINK??
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2 comments:
Hey, it's Erin. Well first and foremost, I loved your idea Ashley! Really, I thought seeing everyone's different personalities was fun (and funny).
I was a little surprised by some of the reactions I got (or didn't get). I had expected to be made fun of (if only a little bit), but fortunately that didn't happen. Unfortunately, I found it extremely difficult to keep in character (by being extremely nice and sweet to everyone). It's so easy to fall back into your everyday pattern of behavior in all your daily interactions with the people you know. That might be why everyone took me seriously and thought I was trying to look nice - because my personality didn't change much. It might have made it more realistic if I have , I don't know, but I'm doing this all week (seriously, I thought that this was fun). Results: not too much noticing (maybe because of spirit week). I'm banking on tomorrow and Friday but who knows. I guess the conclusion I can draw is that my friends and family don't really care about how I look (which is nice to know :). (As a side note, I'm not going to lie, that conclusion makes happy.) Another is that it is so hard (maybe even impossible) to know a person completely, because you're constantly finding out things that you never knew about them, that they might see any differences (if they were relatively subtle as opposed to a complete 180 in appearance/behavior) that they might think of it as an extension of you, a side that they hadn't quite seen yet.
I think that one of the reasons that some of us felt like we were lying was because we knew this was temporary, something that we weren't and essentially a pretense. And i think that that is different than a change in character, a permanent change that we desire and strive to fulfill. That has a feeling of truth to it because it is truly what we wish to be instead of some elaborate character.
Sorry if I seem to be going on and on but I think as I write. I think that the fact that it was difficult to stay in character without extreme concentration and deliberate thinking ahead for every word or action has a lot to do with what Amy said, that we play different roles with different people and we always seem to adopt those roles when we are around each other. For me, I guess it's thoughtless in a way, so expected and so "normal", that's it's hard to go against that. Is our personality so ingrained and habitualized (is that the right word?) that it's hard to shake it? Did anyone else have a hard time? Who thinks that this experiment was a success?
Hey, it's AMy!
Oh yeah, about Ashley's character. She sprayed the oust spray on the bus and the girl next to us started choking! (no she didn't die) I just thought that was funny.
Anyway, I tried to be more optimistic and happy than I usually am, which was hard to do, both because I usually am happy and that level of optimism was more than I could handle. Thankfullky I had Jasmine! I thought that it was difficult to sympathize outwardly with others when they were complaining about school and I was saying annoying things like, "Latin should be fun!!!" I obviously know school isn't always fun. It was like I was detattching myself from more personal conversation.
We form our personalities around our environment and interactions with other people and if we upset that balance, for example, of pessimism and optimism, then we extract ourselves a little from society. Our personalities are a combination of all factors that we experience daily so to change a small part of ourselves was to alter the way we behave around other people.
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