iExamen 2

Tommy Ireland

Dr. Ellis

Understanding Literature

14 March 2013

iExamen 2

            I definitely learned so much more about myself for this examen than I did for the last examen.  I also had way more fun doing this examen as well.  To start, I thought this was going to be kind of hard.  The reason why I say this is that by nature, I am very sarcastic person.  With this being said, I say a lot of things that could come of as rude or offensive but it really is just a joke.  This is why going into it I thought it was going to be challenging.  To my surprise of course, it turned out to be awesome.

            When I first woke up, I first checked my phone.  I responded to texts with various ways of being kind, useful, and true.  For example, if someone asked if I wanted to go get breakfast, I said, “Certainly, I would love to eat breakfast with you.”  The only down side to this is that since I am very sarcastic, some of my friends did not believe me.  However, I did not let this get me discouraged. I kept being positive and using kind and truthful things to say to everyone.  As my day passed, I noticed how compliments were a huge a factor.  I used so many compliments when I saw my friends.  I told them that they looked great and other compliments along the line of that.  Also, my compliments also were about what their friendship meant to me.  I think this was very interesting because I got to really think about what each and everyone of my friends really meant to me.  I was surprised how passionate I really was even for the most casual of friends. 

            When it got later in the day, I returned to my dorm.  My dorm has a couch so it is were most of my friends come to just relax and unwind after their day of schoolwork.  I noticed since I was being kind and true, that I never talked badly about someone else.  I don’t normally talk bad about people but there are times when it is almost inevitable to do so.  I sat back and did not participate in the gossip that was occurring.  What I realized is that it is so much less stressful when you don’t participate in talking about others behind their backs.  I really enjoyed the relief of not having to worry about someone possibly hearing myself talking about them.  With this being said, this was definitely one of the most important things I learned.  The fact that I realized how stressful talking bad about people behind their backs was really amazing.  I am so glad I found this out.

            Overall, this was such a valuable experience.  I had so much fun in the process.  I learned that telling people the honest truth about how I feel about them not only made them feel good, but I also felt good in the process.  I felt that I was making such a positive impact on the people I came in contact with.  What I learned from this is that I can make myself and the area around me more positive and happier just by saying positive, kind things to people.  It made even the cold day of Wednesday seem warm and happy.  Earlier in this paper I talked about how I learned that not talking bad about people relieved me of unnecessary stress.  This was such a great discovery for me and I am so glad I got the opportunity to find this out.  Going into this, I viewed talking about people as a normal thing that doesn’t affect the way you feel overall.   Wow, was I wrong!  This not only made me realize how it relieves me from stress but also made me a nicer person.  I am putting into practice every day for now on the act of being kind and truthful.  I never thought that I would learn such valuable life lessons from doing such a simple exercise such as one like this.  I am grateful for the opportunity and hope I can try similar exercises such as this in the future.  On a lighter note, my friends won’t be thinking I’m being sarcastic when I be extremely nice to them!