Hi everyone, my name is Lauren and
I am terrible at writing about myself. This isn’t one of my defining
characteristics but probably comes from one, that being my tendency to
over-think things and be self-conscious. I never want to “say the wrong thing” or appear this way or that way to someone
else. Although this part of my personality is frustrating, there is no doubt
that it is a major aspect of who I am. But I am not just a nervous ball of anxiety
and self-consciousness; I believe I am also very dependable and loyal. I try to always be there and be
supportive for my friends and loved ones. I form very strong attachments to
people I care about in my life and so I always want to do whatever I can to
ensure their happiness. I would also say I’m pretty easy-going and
non-confrontational. I don’t like to fight or argue with people, and I hate
holding grudges, so I tend to let things go easily and act cool with most
situations. And finally, I think one last defining characteristic of me is my fun-loving
nature. I love to do things and be a part of things and that paired with my
easy-going attitude makes me ready and willing to try a lot of new things.
There are plenty of other traits that I can’t think to name that would define
me, but these are some core traits that make up who I am.
I would consider my lineage to be
my family, as those who precede me, and then all of those around me that I in
some way effect as those after me. My family and my relationship with my family
is an interesting and hard to describe one. I love my family, there is no
question, but there have been extremely stressful situations that occurred in
my family life that definitely shaped how I came out as a person, and they are
events that I would not consider positive. I have very strong bonds with my
older and younger sisters, especially my younger sister as we sort of had to
band together through periods of extreme familial stress. But I do believe I
was raised well, generally, and I try to be a positive influence to those
around me.
The ideas,
ideals, and ideologies on which I stand as a person are a wide range of things.
I try to be receptive to most ideas and I love learning about other people’s
ideologies, but this doesn’t necessarily mean I’m easily influenced. I wholly
believe in understanding as a key part of the ideals on which I stand. This
meaning that I believe others should learn to be receptive and understanding,
as I try to be, of other people’s positions, taking into account how they were
raised and their own potential identity and biases. We don’t need to all accept
other’s choices or ideals, but I believe that understanding is key to making
general human interaction more positive. I put a lot of weight in hard work as
a general belief. I don’t think that hard work will achieve everything
(sometimes there are limiting circumstances and there are always random
contributors to whether or not something goes well) but I believe that nothing
should come for free. Hard work teaches people to be more respectful of one
another and it ensures one is disciplined and determined. I try to work hard at
everything I do to achieve my goals.
The culture
with which I was raised and the traits of my personality mean I have
internalized biases that sometimes I’m not even aware of. I know that I have a
lot of bias towards those who I perceive as not hard working. The problem with
this is that this can mean I see someone my age who doesn’t have to work
multiple jobs to afford living day to day as not “hard working” even though I
know there are plenty of circumstances in which that is not the case. I try to
control that bias but it can be hard sometimes when the amount of money people
have or don’t have can feel like a competition. Other personal biases I have include biases about mental
illness. I have dealt with mental illness in my family, in myself, with other
loved ones, and so it is a very sensitive and touchy subject for me. I am sure I have many other
biases besides this but one final one I know is bias about sexuality. As
someone who is not heterosexual I have a bias against those who are, but also
as someone who was raised to believe that heterosexuality is ‘normal’ or ‘what
I should be’ I still have a lot of internalized bias against myself because I
am not. It is hard being aware and constantly trying to check myself because of
these biases but I make an effort to.
All of my traits, my history, and my
biases make up my identity. I try to be self-aware, sometimes too much so, and
I try to not let all of these things completely dictate who I am and my response
to the larger community as a whole, but I can’t always help it. In terms of the
mediascape, my identity generally sways me to be highly critical of general
media. As someone who values understanding, I feel like media often
misrepresents many things and I tend to be highly critical of that. I am
easy-going and always willing to expose myself to new media, because I do think
media enriches us as people and I know I owe a lot of both positives and
negatives of my identity to popular media, but I am still very critical of it.
However, I am very excited to delve more in to the mediascape in this course as
well as determine how my identity fits in with it as we progress.
