Blog #1

Since my parents are older I could not leave the house to interact with people because of the ongoing pandemic. Throughout this week by using Facetime and Zoom I tried to change big and small parts of my persona while talking to my friends. The biggest part of myself that I changed was tone of voice. I tried talking in a deeper voice which also in turn ended up being more monotonous. The small part of myself that I changed was just trying to be more happy overall during conversations. Surprisingly I saw much more of a difference from the latter change! When I tried speaking in a deeper voice my friends did not really notice because I did not change it that much. One of my friends asked whether or not I was sleeping before I answered the call but others had no clue. I felt as though my conversations were a little more dull with my new voice because speaking in a monotone voice is a serious conversation killer. I felt as if my friends thought I was not in a good mood even though they did not say anything. I also noticed that my phone calls were much shorter than usual and that is most likely due to the conversation being too boring. When I realized this I decided to test out whether or not doing the opposite would cause my conversations to be more fun and meaningful. Keeping a happy mindset really changed my conversations with my friends. There was much more laughing and an overall much better vibe to my conversations. After I saw how much better I felt just by acting happy I decided to do this for the whole day and I saw a massive improvement in my attitude and conversations with my family as well. The final change that I made to my persona was slightly dressing up and keeping my camera on for classes versus staying in bed and keeping my camera off. This changed my attention span drastically! When I dressed up for class and kept my camera on I felt much more focused because I was scared that the teacher would see me not paying attention. When I was in class from my bed and kept the camera off I found myself frequently checking my phone and not staying as engaged as I should have been. This was very important for me to test out because I am usually kind of lazy and like to keep my camera off but I had to realize how much better I would do in classes if I kept my camera on and focused more in class. This week in INFO 303 we learned about Bucholtz and Hall's theory on identity and interaction. The five central principle that they mention are Emergence, Positionality, Indexicality, Relationality and Partialness. I believe that the switches I made to my persona this week affected my Emergence and Partialness. The emergence principle states that language use actively construct our identity and I saw this through my calls with my friends. When I spoke in a more monotonous tone my conversations were much more boring so my friends must have thought I was in a dull state. When I tried to act more happy on the phone it made my identity come off as more cheerful. This does not make much of a difference in the way my friends view my identity but it was a great reminder for when I first meet people or interview for a job. Partialness was another factor that I saw heavily affected by my change in persona. Partialness is the idea that our identity has many different parts that we can use interchangeably. When I kept my camera on for zoom classes I started by putting on a more professional outfit which helped me get into a more attentive and focused persona. When I kept my camera off it made me act like a worse student who does not pay attention. This first assignment has brought a lot of insight into my own behavior and how I can improve my own identity. Being able to see how changing my persona can completely change my mood and the way others see me has made me realize how much my language and attitude affects my everyday life. In the future I will try to stay happy and focused everyday because it can make huge changes throughout my life. Thanks for reading!

#INFO303 #SWAG #PersonalitySwap #BlogLife #Happiness