iExamen 2

            I chose to do my second iExamen on Friday rather than a Saturday or Sunday to ensure I wouldn’t be tired like I was the last time. I woke up early to study for my first of 3 assessments, a biology quiz with a few girls in my class so there was not much talking unless it was useful (facts about our quiz) and true (at least we thought they were true). This is pretty common for me and didn’t take any extra work or thought to do. The next “conversation” I had that day was quite different from what I normally do.  After my quiz and at the end of my class a classmates and I went up to our biology professor to express our concerns about our lab professor, something I would normally never do. I usually let the teacher evaluations reflect my opinions of how a teacher runs a class. I was very truthful and felt like I only said what could be useful, while I noticed a few other people seemed to let their personal opinion of the professor take over, it gave them a tone that wasn’t too kind and sounded whiney.

            The rest of my afternoon was busy with school related obligations until about 4:30 when I could finally relax. This was hard to do when I was hanging out with my friends because we are all very sarcastic, so even if we say something “unkind” you know it is meant in good humor. This left me with a dilemma, do I communicate strictly in kind, true, and useful ways, or do I communicate so long as the underlying meaning is kind, true and useful?

            I tried to follow the assignment as closely as I could but I found myself being sarcastic and joking around a lot, although it was kind intentions, on the surface it didn’t sound too kind. It was very hard to do because it felt very uncomfortable responding to a sarcastic comment in a very “true, useful, and kind” way. It was kind of awkward and I feel like it made my friends think I wasn’t getting the joke or maybe was in a bad mood, since I normally do not respond like that. Another difficult part to deal with was gossip. Although I am not a super involved in gossip or drama, it still happens and comes up in conversation at times. When it did happen it was very hard to contribute to the conversation. For example, everyone was talking about how one of our friends was being mean/rude recently, and while everyone complained all I could contribute was a phrase along the lines of “well maybe there is something else going on”, which made me feel like my mom since that was always her response if I ever tried to complain about someone/something. I have noticed that it is something I find myself voluntarily saying more often than I used to.

            I don’t think this was an extremely hard task to do for one day, but I imagine extending it for even a week, it would be much more challenging, let alone trying to live like this all the time. It’s easy to be nice and kind and true for a short period of time, but I don’t think (most) people are naturally wired to always be like this. It is something you have to constantly work on and be aware of because I think we naturally like to complain because it can be an easy way to bon and connect with people, and sometimes lying is just easier. Even if that lie is just saying “I don’t know” because you don’t want to think about or explain the correct answer. I think this would be a good exercise to do every month or so just to keep in touch with your purpose of communication and realize how it can affect others.