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.
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