This assignment, which urged me to consider self-control, self-perception, and self-presentation through reflecting on who I am, did a lot to help me utilize course concepts and apply them to my own experiences. I thought that the act of choosing a variety of photos in which to reflect on was very conducive to the reflection I wrote. This connection (or disconnect) between how I choose to portray myself and how I am in the natural world helped me to create the paper, as there’s a variation just based on the fact that I don’t document every aspect of my life for others to see. As I decided to dig deeper as the paper progressed, I was able to reflect on why I present myself the way I do when I don’t care a lot about how others view my aesthetic appearance. When I realized how I could find a disconnect between my self-concept and self-presentation through this activity, it made me consider that I often haven’t considered these two aspects of myself together.

I would feel as if any individual would find importance in this activity, as more often than not the way we portray ourselves (whether it be online or to others directly) varies from how we feel about ourselves in reality. By truly understanding the differences between our actions, our presentation, and our views of ourselves, individuals can discover what’s truly lacking in their lives. I would hope that others could reflect on these aspects of themselves and also learn that others don’t find variances in self-presentation to be deceptive, as it’s different from the self-concept.

 

For my visual image, I decided to pick a picture of an Instagram filter, as it metaphorically represents how our self-concept (the filter) may vary from our self-presentation (the real face behind the filter).