Coordinated Management of Meaning

Observation #2
January 26, 2015
Coordinated Management of Meaning

In January of 2014 I was taken to the emergency room of Ball Memorial Hospital on the first day of classes after a Staph infection caused my finger to double in size.  After a minor operation to remove the infection from my finger, I spent the next two days in a hand wrap and the next two months constantly changing hand bandages as my finger finally closed into the cross shaped scar that remains still today.  Over these two months, people constantly questioned the purpose of the bandages.

With every answer, I had to walk the fine line of telling people the exact story of what happened to my finger while also leaving out many of the more disturbing details of the situation.  For example, my story lived includes the fact that my finger had been causing me pain for about a week prior to the incident and I only went to the emergency room when my neighbor saw that the infection was oozing out of an opening; however, I do thoroughly enjoy over-exaggerating the oozing as more of an explosion.  Because of this, I lacked successful management of my story lived with my story told.

In addition to my use of hyperboles and exclusion of details, I am unable to explain the feelings that went through my head throughout the operation.  For example, I often tell people that it was extremely painful and that I was fairly calm throughout the process (I am not at all afraid of having a finger amputated), but I struggle to express the humor of the overall situation.  The story of lived consisted of a sassy nurse who stepped back from the operation because my blood was spurting out of my wound and a doctor who kept commenting on how excited he was to cut my finger open.

Symbolic Interactionism

Observation #1
January 25, 2015
Symbolic Interactionism

I have this friend; I'll call her Julie.  When Julie speaks, she speaks loudly.  As a quieter individual, I prefer to not draw attention to myself, but when I am with Julie, that becomes nearly impossible as she seemingly screams as loud as she can during mundane conversations.  This overwhelming quality of Julie immediately caused me to dislike her and find her extremely annoying.  On the other hand, the other members in my friend group find her lovable and friendly; therefore, I am around her far more often than I would desire.

Despite my friend group encouraging me to look past her loud, egotistical exterior, I find it extremely difficult to look past the initial labels I placed upon Julie.  In our text, it is said that "humans act toward people or things on the basis of the meanings they assign to those people things" (55).  When I assigned terms such as "loud" and "annoying" to Julie, I became overly aware of these character traits in her.  When she wished me a merry Christmas, I saw it as a fake attempt to win my friendship.  My friends, on the other hand, see her more like a lost puppy looking for a group to call her family.  Though my friends and I interact with Julie together, they interpret her actions differently than myself.

In our discussion of Mead, we discussed the relations between meaning, language and thought.  In particular, we discovered that thought modifies meaning.  When my friends hear about Julie, they have thoughts of how friendly she is and become happy.  When I hear about Julie, I quickly become annoyed and only think about how loud she is.  It is important to note; however, that Julie is not inherently any of these qualities, but rather our terms to describe her relative to others.  To my friends, Julie may not be as loud as most of the people they know, but to me, she is one of the loudest people I know.  Through symbolic interaction, my friends and I have come to our own interpretations of Julie.  It does not matter who the real Julie is, because our interpretations each have their own real consequences on how we act towards her.


Bonus Content:  My junior year, we had to write a "Who am I" essay.  I thought this tied in with our opening activity that day extremely well!

Who am I?  I am Smacky Browning.  I am a statistic.  I am more.  To me, I am many.  To you, I am one.  The life I live is short, but the impact I make is long.

I am a seeker of knowledge.  I am a student.  I know statistics.  I am a statistic.

I am Max, but I am not your dog.  I have the most common dog name.  I am not your buddy - that is the third.  That was a statistic. I am a statistic.  Therefore, I am that.

I am now.  I am the present.  I am the poorly wrapped gift held sentimentally by some.  I live for the future.  In the future, my present will be a statistic of the past.  I am a statistic.

I am here.  Turn around.  Ninety-five percent of people just turned around.  You are a statistic.  I too am a statistic.

I am a writer.  I am a friend.  I am a comedian.  I am German.  I am sitting in a chair.  Americans sit in chairs more than Germans.  I am a statistic.

I am orange.  I am a finely tuned mixture of anger and joy.  My favorite color is orange.  I am my favorite color.  Some call me narcissistic.  I am a statistic.

I am easily annoyed.  I am easily annoyed.  I repeat for emphasis.  My computer can copy and paste.  I am a statistic.  I copied that sentence from above.

I am I.  I am the nominative singular pronoun. I am the ninth letter of the alphabet. Am? No, is.  I know the alphabet.  I comes before you, but I do not come before you.  You are a statistic, but I am a statistic.  Therefore, I am you.

I am bored.  I am doing homework.  Homework is boring.  The connection is obvious.  I am obvious.  I am black and white.  No, I am orange.  No, I am a statistic.

I am short.  I am lazy.  No longer will they call me a statistic.  I am a stat.

I am redundant.  I am repetitious.  I am excessive.  I am extra.  I am wordy.  I am reiterating.   I am the 13,312,165th person to search in dictionary.com today.  I am a stat.

I am me.  I am the key.  I am free.  I am rhyming.  I am a bee.  I am black and yellow.  I am now singing.  That is a popular song. No, I am orange.  I am a stat.

I am a victim.  Procrastination and addiction fight me to the death.  Thank you, Facebook.  You made a stat.  I am a stat.

I am a nerd.  I know math.  I am imaginary.  No, i is imaginary.  Therefore, I am not a statistic.