So imagine me as an angry little kindergarten student: angry little Melody, crossing her arms, with her boy short pixie cut, huffin' and puffin' with tears in my eyes as I stomp home because I got a "U" (cue dramatic "dun, dun, DUN!") on my first report card. Yep. That happened to me in kindergarten. I got my first "Unsatisfactory" in the Participation for not raising my hand enough and speaking up in class. At that time my own thoughts were: so what if I didn't speak up so much in class or feel the need to raise my hand as much? So maybe I was a just quiet kid who liked to think before I talked! But inside, I was really fuming mad at myself for not being as social as other kids or as courageous and willing to put myself out there in front of the class to say something, or anything at all.
At home I was always an only child growing up (my younger brother didn't come until I was 10 years old; so we never had many sibling fights because he was a boy and ten years younger), so I never had to raise my voice to be heard, or compete for any attention when I was young. But transferring from that environment, to the chaos of kindergarten was kind of intimidating to me and caused me to lose a lot of confidence in interacting with large groups of people and talking in front of the entire class. I was much more comfortable observing others, than I was being under their scrutiny. Every time I had to talk in front of the class, I could always feel my ears turning red with heat- it was just unbearable to me at that time. Even during outside recess games, being "it" during Tag was like instant death to me because, then I was the center of attention, and not only that, everyone would always be running away from me in fear!
So the main point I'm trying to get at is that, in terms of self-concept, I've always seen myself (my actual self) as a intensely shy, quiet bookworm who loves reading and writing, but hates public speaking and sometimes math too. However, my ideal self, that I really wanted to be, was the "cool" girl who is comfortable with talking to anyone about anything and who can make friends with whomever she wants to because she's confident and comfortable with herself. But I've never really felt comfortable talking in public and I've always been hesitant to raise my hand in class, so it wasn't something that could be easily changed just because I wanted to become more outgoing, social, and comfortable at talking to others. In addition, public media wasn't helping much either because as we all know from watching the popular movie "Pitch Perfect" (which I love as much as the next girl... but "aca-scuse" me, their portrayl of Asian girls is quite terrible! http://www.racialicious.com/2012/10/18/pitch-perfect-and-its-far-from-perfect-portrayal-of-asian-american-women/ ), apparently Asian girls either are super shy and talk so quietly you can never hear a word they say, or hate all non-Asian people and only hang out with their Asian friends (neither of which is true). I feel that this movie - and other popular media that have portrayed Asian women as a) extremely quiet, b)unable to drive (which I personally disagree with because the GA DDS clearly supports us in the pictures they display on their pages: http://www.dds.ga.gov/teens/index.aspx) c)obsessed with Hello Kitty, d)able to make awesome egg rolls (I have no idea how to make one because my mother loves eating healthy so my family has never made anything deep fried including egg rolls) - are often negative because they cause our own reflected appraisals of ourselves (or looking-glass self, how we think others view us) to be distorted and skewed towards those Asian stereotypes that people often lump us into.
So over course of my elementary, middle, and high school years, I have slowly tried to change that fear of public speaking. Besides my irritation with my participation grades themselves, I could also see that having good public speaking skills and interpersonal communication skills was an ability that could greatly benefit me in any aspect of life as we are all social beings and communicate as such through our interactions- whether it be in work, relationships, or other aspects of life.
Thus when I came to UGA, I made a resolution to myself: I would try to talk to at least one new person each day and speak up in a large class setting at least once to twice a week. Although it was very difficult and sometimes painfully awkward for me in the beginning, as the weeks went along, I slowly found myself being able to better adapt to different personalities, classroom situations, and in general communicate to others with more fluidity and confidence in myself. In fact, two months into this challenge, all my high school friends started leaving supportive comments to me about my change in behavior that they had noticed. Because they knew how quiet I had be in the past, they could see the effort I was putting to improve my talking abilities, and how it was allowing me to become a lot more comfortable with putting myself out there, being the first to strike up a conversation, and making more connections in general. They even started labeling me as a "social butterfly," which felt almost humorously ironic because I had been so quiet in my middle school and high school days. Because of this challenge I set for myself, my confidence increased and has since allowed me to not only attain a position as an RHA representative on Myers Community Council, but to also become elected as President of Chinese Language Society this year and attain my RA position in Soule this year. Thus I feel like the guidelines for improving self-concept in the textbook really resonated for me because I first made a firm commitment to improving my public speaking and social skills, set realistic and fair goals to take steps towards improving these skills, and then had the supportive context of my friends cheering me on to help me improve my self-concept and be able to achieve my ideal self.
No comments:
Post a Comment