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Friday, March 11, 2011
Pondering My Big Picture
Welcome to my bigger picture. My name is Amy Copelin. I’m 27 years old, a pregnant mother of a 2 ½ year old son, married to a military man, and a brand new student at Everett Community College. I am a hardworking person who does everything she can to help other people, usually putting myself on the lower end of my priority list. Everything I do is for my family and to help better us in the chaotic ever changing society we live in. I tend to bite off more than I can chew at times, leading to burnouts and re-evaluations of my life every so often. During one of those evaluations, I realized I needed to get serious about school after 9 years of going on and off. I decided to go back to college to try and get my nursing degree, so I could continue my pursuit of helping others. It has been a difficult task to say the least. Not only am I a stay at home pregnant mother, taking care of my husband, and babysitting 2 young kids on the side but I also have a full time school schedule that is overwhelming and a little ambitious right off the bat.
English 101 proved to be not the easier of my classes like I thought it would be. Since my husband is gone a lot of the time in the USCG (United States Coast Guard), I chose to take online courses so I could still stay at home with our son. In high school, I got straight A’s in English, always receiving praise for my knowledge and assessment of the assignments I was given and the analysis of those assignments. This did not start out as the case in English 101. I found myself thrown into a whirlwind when I realized I no longer understood what analysis meant. The idea to “think outside the box” was a foreign concept to me since I hadn’t pushed my thinking farther than what type of cereal my toddler wanted for breakfast in years. I was increasingly afraid I wouldn’t be able to do well in this class. It is one thing to write a paper on what I think about something; it is something completely different to write about how and why the causes of those thoughts occur. Feelings of being too old to go back to school and of being a failure began to take over my soul. In the end, I chose to rise above it all and power on through the class.
When I first chose to take English 101D, it didn’t really dawn on me what the “D” actually stood for. Yes, I knew what diversity meant, as in we are all different, but I never thought about what exactly made us all different, the how factor. Through our readings, the movie we watched, and all the discussions, I changed my definition of what diversity is. I was shown that while we are different and do not need to consent each other’s differences as our own, we do need to respectfully accept them for what they are, agreeing with them or not. Diversity is also changing our ideas if need be by flipping the coin over and looking at the other side, pushing ones thinking even further. For instance, in the essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, Gloria Anzaldua showed me there is more to a Spanish speaking American then I had made original generalizations about. She says, “If a person, Chicana or Latina, has a low estimation of my native tongue, she also has a low estimation of me” (82). Starting to have more sympathy for the pressure she received from her own culture, I changed my one-sided thoughts about how one should conform to the “American” way of life. Now I realized that to be an American there was no need to get rid of your identity by eliminating your culture from your life, a thought I don’t think I would have recognized if not for this class.
During this class we touched on three major aspects of life: Identity, Community, and Tradition. In the Identity unit, the clear message I took away from it was that our identities are shaped not only by what we look like and where we live and how we perceive ourselves, but also by the judgments and perceptions of others. This idea was followed up with the unit on Community, and the disproof that community was just the places where we all live. Community revealed to be more than that, to be a group of likeminded individuals with common goals, whether it is people who go to the gym, people who collect Barbie dolls, or people who attend a weekly quilting class. After all this, what brought it all together was the unit on Traditions. We dived into the mindsets that traditions change with changing of the seasons, not only in our own families, but also in society. It was interesting to see how all 3 units tied together and kept going around in a circle of change. Traditions can start the process by changing what someone’s true identity ends up becoming, affecting the community that they eventually belong to, and then watching as that community can ultimately influence the traditions that can come about from being a part of that community.
At the end of the quarter, we were asked to pick 4 pieces we wrote that demonstrated our critical thinking skills, our revising skills, our audience and voice skills, and a piece of our choosing that we would be lost without having in the portfolio. I chose the following:
Critical Analysis: The piece I picked was my timed writing on the viewing of RabbitProof Fence, a movie about persecution of Aborigines by the Australian government. I felt that I really pushed my thinking and tried to really analyze the idea of people living in the “status quo” just to not rock the boat.
Revision and Re-Seeing: I chose my first paper on Identity to revise. After being out of school for so long, I jumped into this paper feet first, not really trying to stay focused and kind of losing my ideas while I typed. After all I have learned I feel like this paper could grow from my newly discovered tender love and attention.
Awareness of Audience and Voice: For this piece, I have chosen my first blog assignment “What’s In Your Wallet?”, describing what someone might think about your identity built solely on what was inside your purse or wallet. I loved writing this piece because it allowed me to have fun with what I was writing and tell a story of how each piece found its way into my purse.
My Choice: For this portion I picked my blog on Communities. Blogging is something I really enjoy and to share what being a military wife is for me is something very personal and was a great reflection on my feelings about the ladies I share this community with.
My hope after reading this is that you are left with not only a true sense of who I was before English 101, but also the writer I have evolved into after learning so many different skills. This course has helped me to critically think about things that I never would have before, and makes me feel confident in being effective in college writing in the future.
Analyzing the Rubix Cube
All throughout high school, I thought I knew what analysis was. Unfortunately, I was led astray. To me, analysis was just a summary of what the topic was. Analysis is more than that. It a literal break down of the topic and answering the why and how about something, pushing your thoughts farther. The piece that I think showed my best understanding of analysis was my timed write on the movie RabbitProof Fence. The assignment we were given was to demonstrate how the film defined what it is to be an outsider (avoiding unnecessary plot summary ) and in the second part of the essay, discuss how the film challenged or affirmed our own perceptions of what it is to be an insider or outsider. An example of where I showed what it is to be an outsider was when I said, “So often outcasts will just go with the flow of the oppressors, continuing to follow the status quo, and not cause any trouble. No one wants to “cross the line” for fear that an iron fist could come down upon them. People want to avoid more suffering and pain and move into a way of life of just going through the motions, looking for hope in a positive outcome.” The place where I expanded my previous beliefs about outcasts was when I revealed that outcasts were that way because of a choice they had made. The film contradicted that belief and showed me that, “being an outcast is not necessarily a choice, but is more about the people that are around you.”
Part of a Rubix Cube
Being an outsider is like a rubix cube. While there are many colors that need to work together to make a completed cube, so are there many factors to what makes us feel like an outsider. All throughout history, we see people who are segregated from a group because of who they are and/or what they stand for. It can be anything from just the color of their skin or hair to what religion they practice or even what nationality they are. Time and time again, these outcasts continue to be cast aside for these and many other bases because someone didn’t agree or like them. The film Rabbitproof Fence expresses what an outsider is by giving us a look into how the domineering group perceives the outcast, and affirms the idea that unless we fit the mold of that group, castaways we will continue to be.
Society has always had turmoil between groups, one always being seen as beneath the other. In the film, the Aborigine is looked at as dirty and wrong by the European white man. Mr. Neville, the legal guardian put over the Aborigine’s, perceived them as a race that needed help from the white man to escape the harmful effects of being primitive and uncultured. He thought that by removing the half-cast children, from their homes, he was “helping” them become cultured and live a worthy life. People can often think they are doing a good deed by stealing the identities of the outsiders and forcing their ideas and views, the right views in their minds, upon them. The outcasts are then forced to decide between two things. They can choose to succumb to the people that are telling them who they are is wrong and change their identity or they choose to fight against the hatred and separation and stand strong in their own self.
Going against the grain of the dominant group is always a challenge because the stronger group preys against the weaker one, thinking they can get away with it. This movie upheld that challenge by the lack of resistance from the Aborigines to the Government. While the children were clothed and fed and treated with a certain amount of kind restraint, they knew what was going on and why they were being taken from their homes was wrong. Yet they did not resist. So often outcasts will just go with the flow of the oppressors, continuing to follow the status quo, and not cause any trouble. No one wants to “cross the line” for fear that an iron fist could come down upon them. People want to avoid more suffering and pain and move into a way of life of just going through the motions, looking for hope in a positive outcome. While we all think that no one would sit by and let this happen to them, so many people do this and end up being the victim.
Before watching this movie, I believed that most outcasts are outcasts because they choose to be ones. However, this movie showed me that being an outcast is not necessarily a choice, but is more about the people that are around you. There are no set rules that define what group is right or wrong, but if someone senses that a group is vulnerable enough, the stronger group will gain a sense of power over the weaker. Forcing their ideals and standards on the weaker group, they effectively change the sense of identity the weaker group has. While the main character in the movie chose to rise above the system, most of the others chose to follow in the footsteps of their predecessors. They kept the same conforming situation going on and on, repeating histories blueprints for one group’s demise because of another, continuing to be seen as a castaway.
Revision of Identity
I automatically knew what my revision piece was going to be the second I read the assignment. I chose my first essay on Identity. When I first wrote my paper, I thought I had done so well. What I got back in my grade was a rude awakening. My thesis that I had thought was extremely specific wasn’t very exact at all. I got hung up on the word “you” and kept jumping on my soapbox and screaming at my readers, telling them what they do and what they thought. The assignment was to prove what the greatest obstacles or challenges to developing a strong sense of self-identity were. I pointed out an obstacle of our peers by using a quote from Emily White’s essay “High School’s Secret Life.” She pointed out that we shape our identity to that of imitating our peers by saying, “They all imitate one another because the imitation speaks of their power. In this context conformity is not a cop-out but a way of broadcasting the fact that your aren’t a weirdo, that you are speaking in the signs of the chosen ones” (18). I delivered a proving of my argument well, but failed to stay on target in my conclusion and lost my thesis throughout the entire essay. After much revision, I feel like I accomplished a valid argument.
Identity: Original
IDENTITY: WHO AM I
All throughout life, we are asked the same questions over and over, “Who am I?” Sometimes we are able to figure out who we are, the person that we want to be, and are content with that person. Unfortunately, life isn’t always that easy and our identity is always being challenged. There are obstacles we all face on the journey to figuring out are own personal identity. We re-invent ourselves over and over trying to overcome those obstacles, always changing, always altering who we are. One of the largest obstacles one faces on this journey is the need to impress others, whether it is our peers, our parents and teachers, or even oneself.
As early as pre-school, our identities begin to be challenged. We worry about if we are good enough to impress the little girl next to us; we worry if she will like us enough to share her Barbie’s with us. Gloria Anzaldua says in her essay How to Tame a Wild Tongue, “In childhood we are told that our language is wrong. Repeated attacks on our native tongue diminish our sense of self” (81). In this instance, Gloria is talking about her native tongue of Spanish. Younger kids that speak differently than how most children speak are made fun of and mocked for speaking another language. Usually it is because the young mocker doesn’t understand, making it sound “funny”. Not only are the words we use a type of tongue but there is also the way we talk, like having a lisp or a stutter. After being teased over and over for all of these, a child who used to love to talk and be outspoken, may become quiet and reserved for fear of receiving more ridicule for the way they speak. They completely change from the child they were becoming to a child who is more reserved and quiet, just to get away from the mocking of others.
The older we get, the more severe the challenge becomes. In junior high and high school, we begin to adapt a different identity all together, just to be accepted by the popular crowd. In Emily Whites essay High School’s Secret Life she says, “They all imitate one another because the imitation speaks of their power. In this context conformity is not a cop-out but a way of broadcasting the fact that your aren’t a weirdo, that you are speaking in the signs of the chosen ones” (18). We change who we are so that the “cool” kids will acknowledge us, talk to us; bring us into their special society so that we belong to that society, no longer being the outcasts. Our true identity is forgotten and replaced by a fake identity that isn’t ours at all.
Another obstacle that many face in developing their own identity is the need to impress their authority figures, like their parents or teachers. Young children look up to their parents as knowing everything and they want to do everything they can to make them proud of them. As these children age, the fight for who they are and what their parents want them to be becomes harder and harder to fight. In the essay The Overachievers, Alexandra Robbins states “Never mind if the students don’t care about the prestige levels of their post-high school tracks; never mind if college is not for them. Sometimes from as early as their toddler years, millions of students are raised to believe that there is nothing more then important success, and nothing that reflects that success more than admittance to a top-tier college”(250-51). They get this idea in their head that if you do not go to college, you won’t amount to anything important. This will make a student, who wants to be an amazing writer, force herself to go to school and become a doctor, because her parents think it is the better and more successful choice. They become someone they wouldn’t choose for themselves, just to fit the mold for success their parents and teachers have set up. They sacrifice their dreams, their desires, and their own self identity for someone else’s dreams and desires.
With so many obstacles always challenging you to be someone you are not, your own self can be an obstacle in the unfolding of one’s own identity. Discovering who you are and not letting your fears and influences change that is an internal battle that we all struggle with as years go by. During Halloween one year, Lucy Grealy, author of the essay Masks, talked about when she wore a Halloween mask to hide her scar on her face. "I breathed in the plastic tainted air behind the mask and thought that I was breathing in normalcy, that this freedom and ease were what the world consisted of, that other people felt it all the time"(71). Her desire to feel normal kept her wearing a mask of what she really was. She hid from the world what she really looked like, because she didn’t feel normal on the outside. Even though on the inside she had the same fears, same thoughts, same everyday likes and dislikes as everyone else, her outside appearance hindered her from bringing out what her true identity inside was.
We all are in charge of figuring out who we are, what our true identity is. From the time we are just young children, to teenagers, to full fledged adults, we are always changing what that identity is, trying to fulfill the outside worlds perception and ideas of who we should be.
Identity Revised
IDENTITY: WHO AM I
All throughout life, we are asked the same questions over and over, “Who am I?” Sometimes we are able to figure out who we are, the person that we want to be, and are content with that person. Unfortunately, life isn’t always that easy and our identity is always being challenged. There are obstacles we all face on the journey to figuring out our own personal identity. We re-invent ourselves over and over trying to overcome those obstacles, always changing, always altering who we are. One of the largest obstacles one faces on this journey to figuring out our true identity is the need to impress others, whether it is our peers, our parents and teachers, or even oneself.
As early as pre-school, our identities begin to be challenged. We worry about if we are good enough to impress the little girl next to us; we worry if she will like us enough to share her Barbies with us. In her essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, Gloria Anzaldua states, “In childhood we are told that our language is wrong. Repeated attacks on our native tongue diminish our sense of self” (81). In this instance, Anzaldua is talking about her native tongue of Spanish. When a young child in a group speaks in a different language than then the other children in that group speak, that child can be made fun of and mocked for speaking a different language. This can happen because the young mockers don’t understand the different language, coming to the conclusion that it sounds funny. Not only is the language we use one obstacle in impressing our peers to discover our identity, but there is also the way we talk, like having a lisp or a stutter. After being teased over and over for these physical impairments, a child who used to love to talk and be outspoken, may become quiet and reserved for fear of receiving more ridicule. They can completely change the identity they were forming into an identity of a child who is more reserved and quiet, just to get away from the taunting of others.
As we get older the more critical the challenge of discovering our identity becomes. In junior high and high school, we begin to adapt a different identity all together, just to be accepted by the popular crowd. In Emily White’s essay “High School’s Secret Life” she points out, “They all imitate one another because the imitation speaks of their power. In this context conformity is not a cop-out but a way of broadcasting the fact that your aren’t a weirdo, that you are speaking in the signs of the chosen ones” (18). We change who we are so that the “cool” kids will acknowledge us, talk to us; bring us into their special society so that we belong to that society, no longer being the outcasts. Our true identity is forgotten and replaced by a fake identity that isn’t ours at all.
Another obstacle that many face in developing their own identity is the need to impress their authority figures, like their parents or teachers. Young children look up to their parents as knowing everything and they want to do everything they can to make them proud of them. As these children age, the fight for who they are and what their parents want them to be becomes harder and harder to fight. In the essay “The Overachievers”, Alexandra Robbins tells that, “Never mind if the students don’t care about the prestige levels of their post-high school tracks; never mind if college is not for them. Sometimes from as early as their toddler years, millions of students are raised to believe that there is nothing more than important success, and nothing that reflects that success more than admittance to a top-tier college”(250-51). Students get this idea in their head that if they do not go to college, they won’t amount to anything important. This will that student who wants to be a writer force herself to go to school and become a doctor, because her parents think it is the better and more successful choice. They become someone they wouldn’t choose for themselves, just to fit the mold for success their parents and teachers have set up. They sacrifice their dreams, their desires, and their own self-identity for someone else’s dreams and desires.
While we struggle with these obstacles always challenging us to be someone we aren’t, someone’s own self can be an obstacle in the unfolding of their identity. Discovering who they are and not letting the different fears and influences change who exists is an internal battle that we all struggle with as years go by. During Halloween one year, Lucy Grealy, author of the essay “Masks”, talked about when she wore a Halloween mask to hide her scar on her face. "I breathed in the plastic tainted air behind the mask and thought that I was breathing in normalcy, that this freedom and ease were what the world consisted of, that other people felt it all the time"(71). Her desire to feel normal kept her wearing a mask of what she really was. She hid from the world what she really looked like, because she didn’t feel normal on the outside. Even though on the inside someone can have the same fears, same thoughts, same everyday likes and dislikes as everyone else around them, their outside appearance can hinder them from bringing out what their true identity inside is.
From the time we are born, we are in charge of discovering what our identity is. Even though society tells us to stand above the crowd and walk to the beat of our own drums, society also creates stereotypes and ideals of who the perfect person is. Sometimes we succumb to those stereotypes and turn our identity into a model that will fit societies’ mold. However, if we cling to the person we know we are, we can build on the ambition of who we are, fight against the stereotypes, all while preserving who our identity is.
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