iExamen 2-Haley Pollard

At the start of my second iExamen, I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect. I’ve always had high expectations of myself when it comes to being courteous to others. This is not to say that I’ve always remained truthful my whole life. This assignment was a rather difficult one for me because I found that I really had to stick to the whole ”if you can’t say something nice don’t say anything at all” mentality. Overall I experienced some interesting things throughout this iExamen that I found slightly influenced that way I communicate with others.

Saying kind things has never really been an issue for me. I like to compliment people just because I know that even the littlest compliments can turn someone’s crappy day into a happier one. The real issue that I experienced was when I was forced to say truthful things. I find that when I communicate with others I’d rather stretch the truth a tiny bit to make someone feel good about something or themselves, rather than raining on their parade or kicking them when they’re down with the truth. I found that the hardest part about being truthful to people was when I knew that a truthful response would hurt them.  Many girls have body image issues, and I found that the only way I could avoid the “I hate how huge these pants make my thighs look” or the, “I have the biggest man-hands in the world” bit, was just to bite my tongue and not say anything. I’m not the type of person to go along with it and say that someone should change their outfit because they don’t think they look good. Usually I would try to convince them that they look beautiful in whatever they’re wearing. But unless I was feeling truly courageous, I bit my tongue for most of the day.

Another thing that I found interesting was that I like to stretch out my stories and make them last a lot longer than needed. This kind of defied the purpose of the exam because while observing my iExamen I found myself saying some utterly useless things. When I wasn’t busy biting my tongue, I would fill in the blanks with random statements, like “Oh my god I’m so hungry,” or something like, “I can’t believe how much homework I have to do tonight,” just to fill in the conversation. I found a lot of these to be incredibly useless and just plain random.

Overall this assignment was an interesting one. I made my fair share of mistakes and found myself going off topic and straying from the purpose of the iExamen, but I did learn a thing or two about myself and the way I interact with others. I felt that I stuck with the mentality I’ve always had about keeping my mouth shut if I don’t have something nice or truthful to say, but it turns out that I kept my mouth shut for most of the day. It would be interesting to see how my behavior changes if I were to try this iExamen again in the future.