iExamen 2

Joseph Kamish

Dr. Ellis

En-101-07

17 March 2020

iExamen 2

            After reading the directions for the second iExamen, I though quite a bit about how it so closely resembled the purpose of the first.  Both are strongly centered around self-observation and reflection.  The more I thought about these activities, the more I saw how helpful they could be.  Practicing different types of social interaction and personal behavior can help you find a thought process that really suits you in all situations.  The first iExamen focused purely on self-reflection, while the second iExamen hopes to build off what you learned previously and put it into practice by addressing people with purely kind, useful, and true responses.  Before starting this activity my first thought was that there was no possible way that I could tell everyone something that is true, and kind, in every situation.

            This exercise was very interesting to me because of how I speak to friends and family on a regular basis.  Normally when I’m around my friends, we freely criticize and make fun of each other, as it’s just part of our casual interactions.  So usually, when I’d find myself calling my brother or friend stupid or an idiot (but not actually meaning it), I had to quickly stop myself and just say nothing at all.  The reason I said nothing was because whenever I throw around insults like that, it’s honestly for no purpose at all rather than just to fill the conversations.  Nobody said anything to me but I’m positive that my friends were wondering why I was acting so weird.  This specific example was particularly funny internally to me, because I would constantly find myself in a situation where my brain couldn’t come up with anything in place of the insult to say, so I would just sit there quietly.  For the most part, communicating like these didn’t really help or hinder me in any way, besides the example that I previously gave.  I like to think that when I speak to people, I do my best to be conscious of their feelings and say something that might help them in some way.  Unfortunately, I don’t believe my friends cared enough to inquire about my random pauses in conversation (when I blocked an outgoing insult), so I never explained to my friends, or family, what I was working on that day.

            For the most part I worked extremely hard to follow the requested parameters of this exercise by speaking to people truthfully and kindly.  The only exception I can think of is when my friend, who had been sad lately, asked to hang out.  I really wasn’t in the mood to see him but telling him that would have just disappointed him more than he already was.  So, I ended up telling him that I was busy running errands with my Mom, which is always a golden excuse.  As well as some good laughs, this assignment helped me realize that your words to others can drastically change how they go about their days.  So when speaking with friends, family, or even strangers, don’t throw meaningless words their way in an effort to escape a social interaction.