Autoethnography – What is “I”?
Dan Burkhardt
College Writing – 101
Professor Harrison
15 November 2008
How My Personality Has Shown Through My work
I had been looking forward to my first college English class ever since I completed course selection at orientation. I have always been passionate about writing and I felt as though I was a pretty good writer who was more than capable of producing work that would be both interesting and worthy of a decent grade. While this has been true to an extent throughout the semester, there have been instances in which I felt demoralized about my capabilities and I forced myself to re evaluate some of my previous work. I believed that my past work had been organized and well thought out, however, I have come to see that I was not writing for an audience and sometimes descriptions and ideas seemed jumbled and non sequential.
When I sat down to revise my first essay, after I initially turned it in, I looked at the marks that had been made on the paper. This was the moment I realized how much of a process writing a “good” paper could be. I discovered that the paper I thought was finished, did not convey the meaning I intended and ergo, it did not accurately portray who I was as a writer.
As I have gained more experience from self and peer appraisal throughout the semester, the clarity and focus of my work has improved and I now include more of my original work in the final drafts. As the course has moved forward, I have been writing more and my revision methods have become more focused. My ideas and thought processes have started to form in accordance with the rules and lessons that I have learned from past mistakes. Sections of writing became more concise and the topics and genres I chose became more. When I look back at first essay I wrote for this class, I find that I did not answer the question completely. I would like to revisit my attempt at an explanation once more before I try and craft a new answer.
In my first writing assignment, “What is I?”, I believe it is very clear I have not written in essay form in a very long time simply by the way I begin to attack the question.
I. I am , I want, I need. I feel, I taste, I hear, see and smell. The meaning of the word I, seems to me to be a very contextual thing. For example, I could say or even think, “I want to get some lunch”. In this case I would be using the word I to refer to my body, and describing the need for nourishment at that moment. This can also be applied to any of the other senses to describe my physical body interacting with the physical world around me.
When we use the word I in a way to describe our personalities, we are talking about our will and our social tendencies to be a certain way about something. We are talking about our deep personality and the way in which we emotionally feel about our surroundings or situations. People may also use the word I to portray themselves in a certain light. If you were to say “I like shopping at the mall” then you are trying to let a person know that you enjoy shopping at the mall and if you were to say ” I only like wearing Aeropostale or Hollister” then you might be trying to steer that person to gain an impression of you which would cause them to think of you in a certain way. The point of these statements would be to try and shape the view of who “I” am, to you.
I, me, Is someone that not too many people actually know. I, me, is a will, personality and spirit that has been shaped by different environments, people, influences, wants, needs, interests and talents. I am a person, a being, an incarnation of intelligent thought, insight, retrospect and artistic creation. I am a conjunction of physical, soulful and spiritual existences.
I find several things wrong with my answer. For one, I didn’t really begin exploring the true question until the last section. I began with a very superficial understanding of the topic and honestly, I think it is sad that my first instinct to define myself was by the outward perception of who I am. I feel like the middle paragraph where I am discussing shopping preferences and image was very jumbled and confusing and a reader may have a difficult time understanding the point. Simply put, there are a lot of grammatical and word choice errors that exemplify the fact that I have not written anything formal in a long time. I think that last paragraph contains the only redeeming quality in the whole assignment in which I write: “I am a conjunction of physical, soulful and spiritual existences”. I feel that at this point I found what I was really trying to say and began to make a decent argument. I would like to use this paper to elaborate upon that idea because it is, I believe, the central answer to the question.
What is I? This is such a profoundly complicated question. I have a hard time peeling away the layers which comprise such a concept as “I”. As stated earlier, I believe the concept of “I” has to do with a physical, soulful and spiritual existence. When I look at the essays I have written in the past 3 months, a question that I should ask of myself is: have I put all of my effort into the work I have done? My gut tells me that I have. Since the answer seems to be yes, then I must assume that the work has embodied a reflection of who I am either in the ideas I have chosen to describe or the method by which I have chosen to describe them. I would like to choose a couple of instances through my papers which I believe display personality traits of mine and expand upon the reasons why they exemplify those qualities.
The first essay I wrote was a narrative essay about a picture I brought in to share with the class. I chose a picture of the view from the top of a mountain I hiked with my girlfriend. You can see in the distance a slew of shorter mountains and hills which appear minute against the horizon. I chose this picture at the time because I was nervous about meeting new people and I had been thinking about her a lot.
The stars were out in full. Miles away from any major sources of light pollution; the sight that lay before us was one that could not be held from our suburban neighborhoods. 360 degrees around us, the sky was clear, and almost any constellation we thought of could be seen. We sat, talking and admiring the sky for a while, and then walked back to camp to retire for the night.
I feel like this paragraph specifically speaks to the great experience we had while on the camping/hiking trip. The description of sitting on the cliff at night, although probably one of the shortest paragraphs in the whole essay, was actually the reason I wanted to write the paper in the first place. There is something so profound and spiritually soothing about feeling small and insignificant under a blanket of cosmic beauty like the rural night sky. There is also something equally profound but distinctively more assuring about being there with someone else who looks toward the sky with the same perception. It is a feeling of security that can prove difficult to find at times and even harder to maintain.
The sense of hearing is one that I cherish the most, as it has been a key player in some of the most uplifting experiences in my life. I wrote my essay on the sense of hearing so that it would read like a research paper. I wanted to first give the reader a background to understand the hearing process and then dive into details about how the human brain interprets sounds. In preparation for writing my paper, I decided that I would utilize a book about studio recording to help illustrate the way a sound wave operates.
An analogy of how sound waves travel can be demonstrated by dropping a stone into a pool of still water”. The waves will travel from the source of the disturbance in the water and radiate outward. “Likewise, sound pressure waves are generated by a vibrating body that’s in contact with air (such as a loudspeaker, a person’s vocal chords, or a guitar string that vibrates the body of an instrument)”<!–[if supportFields]> CITATION Hub97 \p 23-24 \l 1033 <![endif]–> (Huber and Runstein 23-24)<!–[if supportFields]><![endif]–>.
This type of writing showcases a part of my personality that I am very proud of and fortunate to possess. I am extremely inquisitive and I love to learn new things. The section I chose from the first chapter talks about the generation of sound waves and how they move through space. When I read this for the first time, I was glued to the concept. It blew me away when I realized just how sensitive the sound faculties of the body are and how complicated the method of decoding sound is. I was so fascinated after I read this that I spent more time on the internet looking up facts about sound waves and the hearing process (even before I had to write a paper about it). I believe in any situation that the more knowledge I arm myself with, the better. This has been a practical way of thinking because the more I know about the principals of sound waves, the better I am able to manipulate sounds effects while making music or recording.
Another example of this drive for understanding and knowledge comes later in my paper when I begin to discuss auditory hallucinations and the effects of such a disorder.
It is known that “auditory hallucinations or “hearing voices’ is a condition that affects 70% of patients with schizophrenia and 15% of patients with mood disorders such as mania or depression. For these individuals, instead of hearing just one’s name, voices produce a stream of speech, often vulgar or derogatory
As strange as it may seem, the concept of losing control over one’s own thoughts is very interesting to me.
I once attended a seminar on the effects of drug usage. There was a woman speaker whose son had been abusing hard drugs for more than a decade. She told the group that he had developed a form of Schizophrenia which was induced by his unchecked drug usage. She then asked us to close our eyes as she played an audio recording of what her son described hearing over and over in his mind constantly. The sounds were intense. There was a constant static throughout the whole recording which resembled a TV on a “snow” channel with the volume all the way up. There were voices yelling, telling him to cut himself and calling him stupid and worthless. There were doors opening and slamming shut and music that would start playing and suddenly stop. Needless to say, the potential for consequences like this kept me from being interested in becoming a user of hard drugs, but ever since that seminar I was interested in the concept of schizophrenia. I began looking up topics about it on the internet and watching movies like “A Beautiful Mind” and “Fight Club” over and over to try and understand how a person could believe this world they interpreted was real. This led to my realization that the world is only interpretation. That idea changed the way I thought about myself and the environment surrounding me. I have not since been able to accept the perception of existence at face value and this has only increased my desire to learn.
For the next example of how my personality has shown through my work in this class, I would like to refer to the essay I wrote regarding the sense of smell. I wrote this paper about a sensitive subject. It was written about a past relationship which ended badly and the effects the scent of a perfume had on my life for quite some time afterward.
There is a particular scent that has left my body incapable of ignoring its allure. It happened upon me a very long time ago and now its ghost sits in the olfactory rolodex of my mind, awaiting a catalyst. The extreme pleasures and extreme lows of this aroma have made emotional flashbacks completely inescapable. For when I am suddenly and unexpectedly faced with its haunting memory I am caught in tangled and deliberately woven web, as if my emotions have been pulled through a portal.
This particular scent is the perfume “Gucci Rush”. I became quite accustomed to the scent when I was in high school and dating an ex girlfriend of mine. She wore it very liberally and in every situation I faced with her, the smell could serve as a reminder of that time period. This particular essay was written in a very descriptive and poetic fashion. I did not think there was any other method through which I could describe these sensations and convey the appropriate message.
I believe that I am a pretty sensitive individual who tries to find meaning in almost everything I do. When it comes to relationships, I will be the first to admit that I have been a little quick to jump to the word “love” in the past. To an extent, I believe I have been so liberal in the usage of the word that I have almost forced myself to make it true more so because I wanted to say it rather than actually feeling it.
I made a conscious decision, that the molecular manifestation of a concept I knew little about, love, had finally presented itself. I inscribed that scent into my mind as the definition of such a feeling.
I believe that my relationship with the girl who wore that perfume was one of those instances. The confusion I felt for such a long time about my emotions, played a big role in shaping my subsequent reactions to that scent. After she dumped me on my birthday, I went through a whole range of feelings to reach the point that I am at now. It started with guilt and anger, progressed to a feeling of confusion and worthlessness and was followed by sadness upon the realizing that we would never be together as I had once hoped. The description that best fits my state of mind now is realistic. In the crystal clear, high definition nature of hindsight, I have realized the whole thing was based on my emotions alone. She had been lying and deceptive about her intentions. I am much better than that kind of charade and honestly, I am very grateful to not be stuck with such a manipulative individual.
This scent is a memory and association of my own doing. It has to be, such things are not created with this purpose. My nose has never, on any other occasion failed me in this way, neither since, nor before.
I have a great sense of imagination. I love to look at something and think of how I could change it or make it better. Everywhere I look I see opportunity. I chose the topic of Haptic technology for my essay about the sense touch. Haptics is the term for synthesizing or attempting to reproduce the sensation of feeling upon one’s body. I found an interesting article about how scientists were able to help two paralysis patients “feel” their arms once more after amputation by placing sensors in the prosthetic limbs they now use and working with the nervous system to reproduce the sense of touch on the skin of their chest instead of the arms. The idea of such a thing came to me a long time ago while I was sitting in class, barely paying attention to the lesson at hand (honestly). I was daydreaming about being able to send the sense of touch over the internet. I imagined a situation in which any person would be able to place their skin on an object and transfer that amount of pressure to another surface anywhere else in the world. This caused me to realize that if such a device existed, then it could also be used to treat paralysis patients by providing and external skin to interpret sensations. I placed some ideas in my paper and did not cite them because they are my own original thoughts.
What if a textile covering was placed over the wound of a paralysis or burn victim and through a connection to the brain, the sense of touch could be restored to that area of the body? Imagine if soldiers on battle fields around the globe were wearing paper thin layers of material under their uniforms so that, if wounded, a medic would be able to connect a diagnostic device to the outer layer and know in seconds exactly where the wounds are and how severe
I have never heard of such technologies before and as far as I know, there isn’t anybody working on them. I have ideas like this quite often and only recently have I started to realize that I could possibly make these technologies come to fruition one day when I have the means to start a business. Above even my curiosity and imagination, I have a strong desire to use my thoughts or abilities to make a positive difference in the world.
These advancements will eventually allow doctors to feel through their fingertips very delicate human tissue that needs to be operated on or removed. By utilizing such techniques, it will become easier for patients to interact with more specialized physicians for treatment.
I feel as though most people have goals but few of them take the necessary risks to see those goals become reality. I vow to never become one of those individuals and I try everyday to make sure the things I dream of become reality.
So, what is I? If I were to connect what was stated earlier about being a “conjunction of physical, soulful and spiritual existences” to the examples I gave, then I would say the sense of sight is what I connect the most to my physical existence. The story I wrote about my trip to the summit of a mountain in central Pennsylvania was mostly commentary about how small I felt in the world. The entire landscape before my girlfriend and I was of an incalculable distance and contained such immense volume. It was a relation to that feeling of such frailty and insignificance that brought us closer together under the stars and that is exactly the reason why the picture I chose for the assignment was so special.
The topic that I chose for the essay about the sense of hearing was in relation to my soulful existence. It showcases my thirst for knowledge. I believe that deep down, my soul is one that is always asking questions and attempting to understand the world around me from the different perspectives. The smell essay was another example about the existence of my soul. I am a sensitive and caring individual who really is trying to discover the meaning of love. I have in the past misplaced that feeling and attempted to show that part of me to an unreceptive individual. This had long term emotional ramifications including a distinct anxiety at the exposure to even a simple scent.
Finally, the topic that most directly displays my spirit was my essay on the sense of touch. I have an imaginative and optimistic spirit which, more than anything else, is the guiding force behind my motivation in life. I am intrigued to think that I could be sitting in a class room at 18 years old, daydreaming about a design for a technology that came into existence only a year later. This is the nature of my thought process; to improve, to expand upon concepts and to find opportunity to advance. What is I? I am a conjunction of physical, soulful and spiritual existences that equally and contribute tendencies and perspectives to my personality, thinking and way of life.
