Assignment Takeaway

ATA 5

Introduction/What I Contributed

Putting your best foot forward sometimes means helping others in many different ways. With this particular assignment we were to find ways to help others. A few ways that I personally helped others was to commit to being more helpful to my mom, such as helping clean her house or picking up some food for her. I even started getting outside and walking with her so we could lose weight together.

Another way was to donate to people that are unable to feed their families due to unemployment and COVID-19 issues happening around the globe. I also went as far as helping others during inclement weather conditions in my area. I learned that others are appreciative of the help and aren’t afraid to acknowledge the assistance with gratitude.

Applying Learning Experience to Individualistic/ Collective Societies

This happens in my area quite a bit because I live in a small town where it seems more a collective society in comparison to big cities where it is more individualistic. That isn’t to state that there aren’t many people that come from different states here that aren’t privy to this close knit community. It just takes some time to adapt to new surroundings sometimes. Other times people are relieved and thankful at for the kind and courteous gestures. I discovered a lot about myself during this week. 

Personal Relevance: Smiled More and Felt Happier

I learned that I do believe that helping others is very good for the soul. I found that it helped me relax and smile more than I normally would. I do not smile nearly enough because I have been stuck in what seems like a never ending cycle continuous bad karma/luck. However, for this whole week of contributing to others health and well-being I felt great.

Conclusion

Overall, I felt that there are pros and cons to helping others. One pro, as you may have guessed it feeling good about myself. My happiness improved and my outlook on life was more positive. However, if this was to be mandated I believe there are many factors that would hinder our ability to do nice things out of the freedom to make that choice as opposed to having it be mandatory or regulated.I feel that the natural human instinct is to help sometimes. One of the cons would be that some people would take advantage of kindness if it were regulated. Some would probably stop doing it all together if that were to happen. It is always better to be helpful naturally, at least in my opinion.  

 

 

ATA 4

This assignment gave a little more insight to the way our love style is calculated per our answers to a questionnaire that we took. The most interesting part of the questionnaire is the thought that I ended up being average in comparison to other women on three styles of love: ludus, storage, and mania. This has taught me that I save my love for people that mean a lot to me and that I am playful because I am uncertain of myself and the person I am involved with at the time. Just speaking like that makes it abundantly clear that because of certain situations in the past I have more to offer someone that is truly there for me. I don’t look at this as a bad thing it is just a matter of meeting the person that is right for me. I am still attempting to find the right key for this lock.

On the other end of the results it has taught me that the other three styles of love: eros, pragma, and agape are low for me. All this means to me is that planning love is not good because love changes because everyone changes in small ways. It is a matter of being in the here and now in my opinion. Also I don’t think that any of these styles should come with an all or none subjective quality. I believe that there are always challenges and differences but it is how we rise up to those challenges and differences that allow us to love fully and completely without conditions.

This was a learning experience about myself above and beyond the love style. It helped me to understand just how much we take for granted and how many explanations we give for those flaws instead of working on them, sometimes we manage to let them take us over. This is why I am not afraid to put this out there because I learned a lot about myself and if others are going to see this, at least they know I am working toward a better me. It also shows that I am able to look at myself from the outside not just the inside. 

ATA 3

This takeaway was very interesting to me. I know that I get angry with others when they act in the way that Michael Richards did in his tirade. Some may state that this was due to anger and frustration at being interrupted while performing, but I believe it was more than anger. 

The reason being is that it went too far. I realize that not all people will agree with my interpretation, but I promise there will be a little frustration on my part if you don’t agree. There is a fine line that you don’t step over when you are angry. I believe that line was crossed. I can see how someone might believe that interrupting someone is rude, but not as rude as Mr. Richards was in his rant. There are ways to resolve minor confrontations such as speaking out of turn. He had every right to stand up for himself regarding his sense of respect. 

However, respect is a two way street. If you are in a confrontation and you feel the need to defend yourself the first words that come out of your mouth should not be ones of racist origin. There are plenty of comics that have been in the same situation and either heckle them by pointing out their rudeness by making it a part of their skit. Richards did not do this. For over two minutes he ranted and raged about this audience members behavior in an uncongenial and racist manner.  Although on the other hand, there is the thought that maybe his upbringing accounts for his uncouth behavior. 

There are times we all feel that it is necessary to become hostile, but over simple interruptions? This does not give anyone the right to become so hostile that slavery and racism become an acceptable form of coping. This was eye opening for me because there are times when my temper gets the best of me and now I know for sure that I don’t believe people deserve to be treated with disrespect and unfathomably graphic references to past injustices. It is unnecessary and should have been ceased in a more reasonable manner. 

 

 

ATA2 

Many of the people that we surround ourselves with are the people that we know the best or that know us the best. When we take a look at one another we see different self-representations of one another. Though there are times when we don’t know ourselves better than our friends or family this is not always the case.

There are moments that felt like self-presentation on the behalf of the subject was very egocentric. For instance, having a partner to ride on a rollercoaster in the future represents the egocentric part of the self. However, the parent/motherhood is in helping your son overcome his fears. Both represent the self just in different aspects.

The overall learning experience here was to know the difference in self-presenting for selfish reasons versus for practical reasons. This should also be a lesson in learning that even though both are valuable does not mean that self-presentation should be conducted all the time. Sometimes it is best to represent thyself in a true fashion by getting valuable, as unbiased as you can get, from those closest to you before job interviews, dates, or even social events that may be professionally based. We can’t always trust our own instincts and judgments when it comes to ourselves.