Wendy Conklin
28 August, 2013
Mr. McElveen
Block 2 English 2
What makes me "me"
I have to admit;
finding symbols of me was pretty difficult.
After thinking it over again and again I finally came up with some that
describe different aspects of me in terms of behavior, personality, and
hobbies. Each in their own way makes up
a different aspect of my life but I can honestly say that without of just one
of these symbols or without one of the experiences that I have associated with
a symbol, there’s no way I would be the same person I am today on one level or
another. From books to glasses, a camp
lanyard and an iPod, even a paintbrush, my symbols make me “me”.
A book is a
wonderful symbol of me, in my opinion.
This is because well first of all I like to read a lot and reading is an
activity that I will always pick over the probably “more important” activities
such as sleep or in some extreme cases, homework. I stay up late just to finish a chapter or a
whole book if I really want to and it has ended up an activity that people
remember me by. Many of the parents at my brother’s basketball
games ask what book I’m on each time they see me and at camp, the only afterhours
phone usage I participated in was to use the light to read by. In literal terms, a book is an awesome object
that I can read when bored or when I really want to, an object that I will
always finish regardless of whether I like it or not, and a book I will
(hopefully) always enjoy reading.
I escape into
books. I’ll get into a zone when I read
that is hard to get me out of. I can go to Neverland one day and to Wonderland
the next while camping out in Jurassic Park during my free time and I can do it
all by myself whenever I want. Reading
is also a way for me to relieve stress. All
of the books that I read describe me in different ways. I read many different genres, so is not
really fair to say that only one of them describes my personality. First off there are the more serious books
that are more similar to Traitor by Gudrun Pausewang, which is way
different from the more chick-flick books such as those written by Gayle Forman. Then there are the more adventurous magic-y
books similar to The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern and the action,
fantasy, teen fiction books that I love such as The Hourglass Door by
Lisa Mangum and even then all of these are different from the more documentary
like fiction and nonfiction books that make me think such as The Stranger
by Albert Camus, The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, and Me
Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris.
These books prompt me to consider all that is around me when and after I
read them, and as good as they are the result of all this thinking makes my
head hurt. In spite of that, though, all
the ideas that result make for some quite interesting art ideas for later. It being that these genres are so different
from one another show the different sides of my personality, from the hopeless
romantic to the deep thinking logical book nerd and even the daring and
adventure-craving girl that is bold outgoing.
All of these personality traits, as different as they are, make up the little
bits and pieces of me that make me who I am today.
Music works in a
very similar way to books in how they describe me, although music describes me
in different ways. My iPod has such an array of songs and artists from Mozart
to Chris Brown, One Direction, and even some Skrillex, that just the mix of them
together when you look at any given playlist of mine, could tell you a whole
bunch of facts and events and emotions of me for any given time of the
year. There are my upbeat playlists that
have songs on them that make me smile and there are my sad playlists that make
me cry and there is even a playlist that I have for homework and studying that
consists of mostly instrumental music. Then
there’s my everyday playlist that is constantly being edited to fit my actions
and emotions. By just looking at the
songs on the screen, friends can tell what kind of mood I’m in, which is way
different from a book in that I will ready any type of book at any given time
of day, but my music is my current stream of emotions put into words by other
people playing over and over again in my and other’s ears.
Aside from my
iPod, I play French horn and sing in a choir.
Both of these activities make me a more rounded person and can make a
frustrating task easier to understand in academics as well as sports. When we have to control the speed in which we
extend our breaths in choir, I can carry it over into swimming when we have hard
breathing patterns and it calms me down because I’m not worried about when I’m
going to have to breathe and not breathe.
Also, when we have complicated patterns and note orders in band, I
connect the way in which I understand it to patterns and information learned in
previous classes at school, whether it be history or math, and the connection helps
me remember the both the pattern and the academic fact better. Being that there’s usually a story to go with
any given song on my iPod, by listening to a playlist I am reliving some of the
memories which causes me sometimes to go off on really seemingly random rants
and to have black sheep thoughts in a usually white sheep mind.
All these random
thoughts evoked from both my songs and my books can put me in a really creative
mood, which connects with another one of my symbols: a paintbrush. Paintbrushes
are tools that have always been around my house and painting has been a big
part of my life ever since I was in preschool.
I enjoy painting, drawing, and most art Medias whenever I need an
activity to pass the time as well as whenever I really have an idea I want to
check out. I can do it anytime and
anywhere, and it shows up a lot on my notes and daily work. Art is an activity that describes me in just
as many ways as reading does; only it describes me to a different group of
people. While to some I am “the girl who
reads at all the basketball games” I am also the “artistic girl” to many
friends and family.
Besides liking and
doing art myself, it’s a big part of my out of school life. I work for the Arts Council of Baton Rouge at
their holiday camps and recently I have been working at birthday parties and at
festivals, helping children to hopefully come to enjoy art as much as I
do. Art makes my life more
interesting. I can have this super packed
schedule, but with a party to work at or a really cool idea in my head I will
forget about all the other worrisome tasks that I need to do and its one of my
escapes because I don’t have to think too much and I can just concentrate, and
in the end I have a product that makes me feel accomplished. Art describes my more creative side- the side
that likes doing fun school projects, the side that likes covering her wall
with random but meaningful drawings on loose leaf, and the side that likes to
have fun. Also, the different medias and
styles of art that I do go with my different social sides—doing art by myself,
I’m quiet and I am focused, but with camp and while working at parties I’m
pretty loud and patient as well as instructive.
One of the most
significant symbols of me is actually my most recently acquired ones. It’s my lanyard from camp this past
summer. On this lanyard there are 4
pins: a pair of lungs, a “wall flower” pun pin, a tiara pin, and a pin with the
Estonia flag on it. This lanyard is a
fairly small object that describes many parts of me- mainly the different sides
of me seen in school and during sports. Each
of the pins describe a different aspect of me that may or may not be well known
among my peers. Altogether, put on the
lanyard, the collective piece symbolizes my social quirks.
The lungs pin is
from the anatomy class I took at camp and it is what I would look at before I
got up to present a project- it reminded me to breathe. Before most recent presentations I can be
seen shaking, pale, seemingly nervous, and breathing really fast. Lungs are for taking in air and supplying
oxygen to the body, and so whenever I looked at it before standing up or even
raising my hand in class, I would breathe.
I would calm down and clear my head, making it way easier for me to
finish my presentation or thought process without crashing and burning. I remember it when doing something really
high in intensity, such as a hard swim set or dry lands practice, and I will
calm down enough to get a good focus on what I’m doing so that I can
improve. This pin represents the side of
me that’s extremely freaked out by presentations, swim events, doing certain
tasks a lone as well as in a group, and it also represents the side of me that
can also get up and go do whatever I need to once I get the hang of what I need
to.
My wall flower pin
has the word wall and a picture of a flower- wall flower- on it. It actually represents both of my social
personalities in one. There’s the quiet
and shy person, the wall flower, who is in class and in larger social
situations with people that I might not really know and then there’s the more
outgoing, bright and bubbly side of me that is represented by the bright colors
of the pin as well as the funny aspect of it.
I am the kind of person that won’t just go up to a complete stranger or
even a past acquaintance and strike up a conversation. I have to really consider it and then I freak
out and think of my lung pin and breathe and think of my Estonia flag pin and
know that there’s a chance that I won’t mess up terribly and I can turn into
that bubbly girl if I need to. In class
I am usually quiet and reserved, thinking of what I could say, but never really
saying it, but some teachers have said I act bubbly and happy; bubbly-ness
doesn’t quite equal confidence though, which is why my next pin has a significant
meaning to me as well.
I use the tiara
pin to remind myself to be confident in social as well as academic, athletic,
and musical situations. It’s a reminder
to me that I’m always in a crown whether or not others can see it and that just
because I don’t get something right away doesn’t mean that I’m extremely weird
or different. On the day of camp that
some girls and I got to wear a tiara and tutu I was way more confident and I
didn’t freak out over speaking up and I met a lot more people who I normally
would’ve been too nervous to talk to.
That experience made me happy- there’s no other word I could use that
would describe it as well. I raised my
hand and discussed my whole opinion without mumbling. During time trials and intense sets at swim
practice I stopped shaking and freaking out and I just blocked out everything
and did it, and I was happy with that.
In band, I can play when everyone else is, but when Mr. Taranto says “let’s
hear the horns on this section”, it’s like I suddenly don’t know how to
play. Each time when I don’t get
flustered, I know it’s not that I didn’t
freak out, it’s that I didn’t look like I was.
Lastly, there’s my Estonia flag pin. It reminds me to keep trying. I’m one of those people who gets really
frustrated after they can’t do a task, whether it be a math problem or, when I
was little, dressing my Barbie dolls up.
I can try three times maximum and then I just lose my composure and get extremely
frustrated and stop whatever I’m doing. At
the field day at camp we were partnered with a group and were all different
countries and the group I was in was Estonia.
We got assigned events and I ended up being in long jump. I can’t jump up or out to save my life. I tried a bit before the event and I was
terrible, I was thinking and saying that I was going to be awful- I was being a
real Debbie Downer now that I think of it.
Something changed though when some people I didn’t even know in Estonia helped
me by showing me tricks that helped with prepping for the jump and by being
overall extremely supportive. I had
tried two times before and that third time, instead of being frustrated and
giving up, I knew I had a team backing me up as well as the knowledge that if I
messed up it wasn’t the end of the world.
Whenever I am doing a daunting task, if I feel like giving up, knowing
that there’s a team who cares about you- not about how well you do- and knowing
that in the long run it’s just another task that gets done, I can be that
person who tries and can do what they want when they set their mind to it.
As a whole, my
lanyard represents me in all the ways I am at any given time in or out of
school: quiet- in volume and in how I portray myself in social situations such
as a dance, shy- even around my best friends and family, a hyper nut, a
laughing lunatic- I am easily amused, confident- tiaras can do that to a person,
and let’s not forget the frustration over not understanding certain topics; or the
frustration from when I can’t see. That
frustration, though, depends on my glasses.
My last symbol
that describes me is my glasses. I
literally cannot see 5 feet in front of me clearly without them. I wear them all the time unless I absolutely
have to take them off. They have pretty
much become a part of me over time as I have had pair after pair, prescription
after prescription ever since pre-k. Even
eye patches at one point. People
recognize me by my glasses—some of my friends haven’t recognized me without
them on before. Some say it’s because of
how I look and others because of how I act without them. My glasses represent the part of me that’s
the ‘normal’ me—the one that is at school, the one that goes to academic camps,
the one that reads all the time at her brothers basketball games, and the “me”
I am without them on can be described as more outgoing—it’s like I can do whatever
I would like to do without that one defining factor holding me down. If people can’t tell that it’s you doing
things, you get more confident in what you’re doing. I guess it’s my rebellious side- the side
that goes outside of the box more by doing various activities.
The outside of my
glasses, the more plain side is what most people see first when they see me—it’s
that defining factor- thick black lines on the side of my face connected from
my ears to my nose. The inside of my
glasses have purple stripes and are colorful and it describes my more outgoing
side that most people don’t see unless they really know me and that defines the
other side of me that most people eventually get to know.
As for any other symbols
that describe me, I could think of some, but they wouldn’t work as well as
these four. Aside from some of their
individual representations of me, the symbols all describe some part of my
personality. This is because I change
mine a lot. I act so many different ways
at different times and places on different days depending on, yes, more different contributing factors. Some of these symbols affect parts that
others don’t and they affect me in different ways. My
symbols, quirky and pretty different with the same basic underlying idea,
describe me as a person pretty well in my opinion.
