iExamen 2

The assignment was again simple enough for the iexamen, building off the idea of the first iexamen we were told to perform self-observation regard to communication during the course of a day, from waking up to returning to bed that evening; or in the early hours of the following day.  This time, however, we were not only to catalogue & observe ourselves but to change our behavior, if necessary, to only “say only what is kind, useful, and true”. 

Going into it I was curious to how I would react to the assignment, since within the field of psychology that an individual can and will change their behavior to meet with the social norms.  Starting the day I didn’t think that peoples’ behavior would be drastically changed as most people are in tuned with their actions & are not motivated by being unkind to others.  I figured that like the prior exercise I would be more conscious of how I acted and reacted in situations but my actions would not be effected or changed by the need to only be kind and productive. 

I guess performing the assignment and reacting to how I acted as a result were indistinguishable as during the day I acted and reacted to what I just did and altered my behavior based on such analysis of my actions.  Let’s jump into the day, I chose Saturday because of the lack of classes & relaxed environment, with breakfast.  My roommates and I were eating our own breakfasts at the table and my roommate curiously picked up the instructions and examined what was written & chuckled to himself.  Naturally this brought the others attention to it & everyone then took their turn reading it and giving their personal opinions of it.  After a good laugh from my roommates they asked if I was even going to talk at all during the day.  unfortunately sarcasm is considered “not kind” by most.  Instead I issued the challenge of having the whole room partake in the exercise, much to they’re annoyance they all eventually agreed. 

The remainder of the day went about between our usual joking demeanor towards each other and extended silence as anyone else came into the apartment not knowing the circumstances.  Gaming was a poor choice as per usual we chose a random game that naturally one of us amazing at and the rest were average to dismal.  Shockingly this lead to much anger and rage-quitting till it ultimately ended up with only one of us remaining.  So sarcasm emerged as the loophole and most of my roommates gave up after a few hours.