Still Learning about Myself

Even though modern psychologists don’t agree that Maslow’s hierarchy of needs go in the linear fashion Maslow described it, when I look at my life in college, it seems it has been going exactly Maslow’s way.  I obviously came into UVA with security and I feel I spent these two years establishing some form of belonging through joining clubs, forming friend groups, etc.  Really just associating with people in the form that I wanted.  Now I have friends that even on bad days I can talk to, or when I am bored, just walk to their rooms and talk to them.  But achieving this step means that the next one is going to confront me and that is what I have been trying to deal with during the last few weeks.

Comm School has emphasized that we have the capability to do great things and we need to build our own personal brand.  I guess I can break this into two categories.  I feel I have already talked about my self-confidence but just to recap: I trust myself in a lot of things, like actions, but with long term goals and aspirations I can’t fathom a lot of things.  When I went to the career fair today, I had to think, “would I actually fit in this company,” because I couldn’t see companies actually accepting me, but instead just accepting the product of me that UVA will produce.  On the other hand, dealing with self-confidence has been much easier for me after accomplishing my study abroad in Japan.  I didn’t think I could actually do it, so I was surprised by my own drive to accomplish it, and because I did, I know I can trust myself to put a huge amount of effort into something that I care about.

Personal brand is much harder because the basis of that is how others perceive you.  As a human I can’t say I haven’t thought about that stuff before, but I rarely think about it.  My empathy level is probably lower than others and I usually just do things that I like, which others see is really weird.  I haven’t really cared about what others think as long as my short term need for enjoyment was satiated, but it isn’t really sustainable.  This attitude of mine has gotten me this far, and it has a lot of good points, but I need to choose which parts to change. 

A good point is that I have heard is that I treat people pretty equally.  I talk to a teacher in the same way I would talk to a classmate, putting my personality in both conversations.  I feel that is the reason that I can so easily talk to teachers and business people because I see them as just other people.  Another good thing that has come out of it is I meet people I like.  People who are accepting of the weird things I do I find are really cool, so it is generally fun to hang out with them. 

Still there is some bad things about it, such as how I realized that I am missing the respect part of Maslow’s pyramid.  Sure, some people respect me for my way of thinking or my grades, but those thoughts usually occur in spite of my actions.  It is pretty understandable because I like to tease people a lot and don’t usually start deep conversations, so there is never an opportunity to show some aspects of me.  Part of managing my brand is expressing myself so people respect me.  For me that sounds like a very bad statement, but as long as it is still me and my personality, then how can I call it bad?  I’m trying to tone down my crazy and cater how I react to people, but old habits are hard to break.  I’ll see how I decide to fix the way I act while not losing all the good points.