iExamen 2

Jonathan Ocampo
10/30/17
Prof. Ellis
iExamen 2

Kindness in a Jesuit Community 

Stacy London’s quote, “Be kind to others even if you do not like them”, highlights my experience of this assignment. As I began my day I realized that I would have to approach it in a different mindset compared to a normal day. I love going to school at Loyola, but there is always that one person that can twist your buttons and get on your nerves. This person, who I will not mention, and I have an uneasy history and have not gotten along well with one another. I made it my mission to take advantage of this assignment and be kind to this person throughout the day.

As I aroused in early in the morning, I felt nervous about how the outcome of the encounter would turn out. The first action I took was attempting to write an introductory text such as, “Hey, what’s up” or “Hey wanna get lunch”. I quickly sent the message and waited in my bed for a reply from him/her. This person agreed to sit down and have lunch with me and have an adult conversation about the drama arising from a personal issue. I was absolutely kind to her, and in no way made her feel scared or fear for her safety. I started our conversation by apologizing for my recent actions that had ended our previous friendship. I told the person how much her friendship meant to me, and ending our friendship put me I a rough emotional state. My feelings towards this conversation quickly changed as she made me feel more comfortable when she accepted my apology and agreed to starting over as friends. This meant a whole lot to me because I usually do not receive second chances and when she willingly trusted that I would change made me feel a sense of pride. This sense of pride that suddenly hit me influenced me to do whatever was possible to make this fallen friendship rise from the ashes. As I finished eating my lunch I told her why I was doing this and she replied with a “Thank you, I was waiting for you to do something about it”.

Going into this project I thought I would get absolutely nothing out of it and write some fake story. This person’s friendship meant a lot to me, and the fact that I used this project to renew something that I thought was lost forever felt very rewarding. Within the past year I have had difficulties communicating kindly to people and this assignment opened my eyes to how kind communication with all people is necessary to keep relationships steady. This assignment has taught me that kind communication with people you don’t get along with can lead to productive talks, which can then lead to a beneficial outcome.

iExamen 2

Andrew Piccione

iExamen #2

30 October 2017

            This second iExamen was much more challenging than the first because I was not free to speak unless I took time to recognize whatever what was about to come out of my mouth was kind, useful, and true. I live with four of my close friends that I have known since high school so my language or comments are not necessarily monitored because I consider them family. I wanted to keep this assignment a secret but when I was confronted on why I seemed unusual I had to share with them the purpose of this exercise. Of course, they made fun of me and even tried to guide me into saying things that would go against my 3 rules but it was only for fun. When I told my mother that I needed to keep my mouth shut and only say things that are kind, useful, and true, she laughed at me. I was known in my house for having a big mouth so my mother did not have much hope that I was going to conduct this assignment well, but I had other plans in mind.

            The first thing that I noticed from the moment I woke up and tried to have a conversation with one of my roommates is that I do not tend to think before I speak. I respond to things rather quickly and since I am in a comfortable environment I don’t try and regulate my language. Once I changed my way of speaking and spoke of things that are only kind, useful, and true I noticed that people have a more positive attitude towards me. You are more likely to be respected and cared for when you speak in a kind, useful and true way. I noticed that the people who are very negative are also harder to interact with if you want to keep a positive outlook on life. Throughout the day I even found myself avoiding certain people because I did not want to break my rule.

            Going into this iExamen I had my doubts because of the negative tones that I usually come cross in my everyday life and I knew I would have to refrain myself from saying anything that was not kind, useful, and true. I did not think that I was going to be able to make it through this assignment without a mistake but as the day progressed I started to adopt this new language well and not have to think so much when I spoke. Speaking in this way became more natural to me the more I spoke. By the end of the day I felt comfortable with my new language and had a positive outlook on the whole day. By speaking of things that are only kind, useful, and true I recognized that kindness can be spread in just a few words because it can really impact someones day. The main thing that I learned from this iExamen is your tone directly affects the person you are talking to. As children, we are told to think before we speak and I think that this principle is forgotten over time because we adapt and become comfortable with the language that is socially accepted around us. I think that our language is going to change countless times as we get older and soon we will have to adopt this language and speak of things that are only kind, useful, and true. I think that this language is beneficial for everyone because it is forces you to have a positive attitude. A small positive remark can impact someone greatly or even turn their whole day around. 

iExamen 2

While partaking in iExamen 2, I noticed a lot about what people believe to be "appropriate conversation". The way we talk to one another is often very insulting and short. Some may see this form of communication as comical and a way of bonding. However, as i went through the day and made sure to make each and every one of my interactions were kind, useful, and true, I found my interactions to be less personal and more pressured to be the "right" type of interaction.

I chose this past Sunday to conduct the full experiment. I knew that it would be a more relaxed, yet social day where I would be able to interact with both friends and family, either in person or via phone. Throughout the day I found myself not reaching for my phone as much, and thinking about what I was saying to those around me. The reaction of my newly found choice of communication was somewhat comical. My friends described me as "happy" and "in a good mood" for the rest of the day. I did not tell them about the task of iExamen 2 until the day was complete for I did not want their knowledge to affect their reaction to my mood and choice of words. 

I found iExamen 2 very interesting because of the way people viewed me, as well as the flow of communication it provided. I found that communication did not flow as easily while I made sure that all of my communications used the three conditions; kind, useful, and true. My friends and I have a very interesting, yet comical interaction with one another. We commonly joke around with one another in an attempt to get under each others skin. This is also seen as an aspect of "closeness" between individuals, which may explain why our conversations did not flow as well Sunday, as well as the estranged feeling that did not subside.

iExamen 2

Lucy Fanto
Understanding Lit
Professor Ellis

For the iExamen 2, I spent the day working as a waitress at my new job, while attempting to speak only kind, true and usefully. It was difficult working with customers at the restaurant, who were mostly elderly men and women, and to stay patient and positive. I quickly discovered that the best way to handle this process was to take time to think out my responses to people before I said them out loud. Although I knew this was going to be a challenge when I began Sunday morning, I was not prepared for what I was going to experience.

As a person who does not normally identify as a morning person, waking up for work at 8am was not ideal. My roommates would also agree that I am not the most friendly person in the morning. When I first entered the restaurant, it was easy to start the day greeting customers and giving them their meals while talking in a kind, true and useful manner. I was able to stay strict with my comments and continue with the process of seeing what would occur later in the day. As the afternoon went on, and the lunch rush hit, I felt my tiredness and sassiness increase. It became difficult to take a rude customers order and not react and make a negative comment to my coworkers. My patience continued to be tested. One customer not only complained about, "The poor, slow service", but argued with me about the price of her meal. I felt it harder and harder to speak kindly and noticed myself to talk less and less to avoid saying something that was not kind, true or useful. At this point in the day, after grabbing my third cup of coffee to get me through the rest of my shift, I realized the negativity that commonly comes spilling out of people's mouths without even noticing it. We are all so quick to make negative comments to and about one another without even analyzing the consequences.

Once I came to this conclusion, I worked very hard to fulfill the exercise to the best of my ability. I went out of my way to be pleasant with customers and my workers, and even specifically made a connection with an elderly woman who was sitting by herself. As I introduced myself and asked if she needed assistance, she informed me of some reason deaths that had occurred in her life, including the death of her husband, which is why she was sitting alone. She continued to inform me about her beliefs in death and explained that the loss of a person is never really real because their souls are always around us. She explained that she even feels like she can talk to those who have passed, as well as receive messages from them which comfort her throughout the day. Finally she informed me of the importance of a well rounded education, a full study of the arts, and the understanding of the body, mind and soul theory. I never felt more touched then after I left the conversation with this unknown woman. I didn't need to know anything about her, to have made a meaningful connection with her. I soon saw how powerful true, kind and useful words were and what they did for others. I was not only left with great life lessons from her experience but I felt as if I can live everyday from now on as a better person, from what she spoke about and by fully understanding this exercise of how to communicate with others.

Later in the day after returning home from work, I explained the task to my mom over text. She not only wanted to thank the teacher who assigned the assignment but also had much doubt that I could accomplish the task with my, "sass filled attitude", that would normally kick in on Sundays. It was hard not to disagree with my mom, but I did find it easier to be kind, true and useful over text rather than face to face. The reason for this was due to the ability to think out my responses to people in advance while not having to deal with the face to face confrontation that is difficult in person. My mom's text about my attitude also gave me a strong motivation to continue this experience after the assignment was due. It was a good challenge to make a real true connection with someone by only saying things that would better yourself and your connection with that person.

This experience completely changed my mindset on the way I communicate with my peers and how it affects them. I learned that when you speak with purpose, it is not only beneficial for you but it can make a person's day or help them through a bad time. It helped me to understand that we should all talk in this way, not just for a homework assignment and the results could make an even bigger impact on us then we even expected.

"How do I Look?"

Going into this assignment, I was not sure what my expectations were, on the one hand, it’s not like I go around all day lying or spewing insults everywhere, but on the other hand, I definitely have the tendency to think as I speak rather than before. My vague expectations were met with similarly vague observations, I did not notice any huge changes in the nature of my interactions with others, but there were a few times where I stopped myself thinking “is this comment absolutely necessary? Is it 100% grounded in truth? Will it make everyone around me feel good?” and this definitely changed individual exchanges.

The most stressful part of this task for me was when my roommate popped the dreaded “how do I look?” question (or something like that)… now of course she looked fine, my roommate is a very pretty, fit person, who can never really look bad in anything. I could give her my usual “yessssss girl you look amazinggggg”, but to be honest, the other outfit she was deciding between looked even better, in my opinion. Now saying exactly that would be useful and true, but would it be kind? Even though I would mean no harm-- and I know she prefers honesty (as do I) when the dreaded “does this make me look fat” issue arises-- everyone has insecurities, and no one wants to hear “that outfit isn’t the best one I’ve seen you wear”, because I know at least for me, all I hear is “you look bad” whether that was the intention or not. This made me think about the difference between the three words “kind”, “useful”, and “true”, because in this context they all had very different meanings. If I told Kayla I’d never seen her look better, it would be untrue, and not very useful, as I would be withholding information that could make her look even better, if I was keeping her from putting on an even better outfit, was it really kind? But if I told her I liked the other outfit better, I risked making her insecure about outfit #1, causing more harm than good, which in turn proves itself not super useful either. Kayla’s confused look meant I let this socially awkward pause go on too long (although I do this often so she probably didn’t think much of it), and settled on answering with “yeah it’s super cute, but what if you switched those jeans for the other ones”. As you can imagine, a similar paradox arose when my boyfriend asked, “are you annoyed at me”, because of course I was, but it was for something stupid, and holding it over him felt un-useful and unkind.

Another issue that arose over the day was that I tend to be an exaggerator, I have a caricature of a personality, so I often find myself telling caricaturized versions of stories, never to the point of changing the nature of the story or making it untrue, just enough to help those around me understand how exciting/funny/confusing/stressful the situation was to me—someone who tends to process things in a very extreme way. I find this interesting, because this almost serves as a way for me to bridge the gap between myself and others, as I suffer from a lot of anxiety, and often process things in ways that are hard for those around me to understand. In this sense, these exaggerations are useful, but I came to realize they were more so useful when I plugged in a “to me, it seemed like *insert caricature here*”, as then it was both true, and helped them to understand not only how I processed something, but how the way I process things is different from how they might.

Overall, I found this assignment interesting, because it made me really think about how what I said affected others. Often, it is not straightforward whether any one exchange is kind, useful, and true; sometimes, a statement is two of the three, or is kind to one person, useful to another, but in unkind or un-useful to a third. The point here I suppose is that there is a kind of triaging that happens to determine the cost-benefit model of each statement in terms of kindness, usefulness, and truth, for every person involved, and for something to be worthwhile it should prove positive in as many aspects as possible, to as many people involved as possible, or communicating it cannot be justified.