Assignment #4: Self Perception

As the average person, I have many identities, personalities and perceptions. They vary widely when it comes to moods, outlook on life and some of these identities have even been named. The main identities that I am comfortable discussing publicly are: the student, the child, the teenager and the artist.


Gabriella the student.
This identity is very basic. I have this identity when I am in school, and sometimes at home. The philosophy behind this identity is "I must educate myself to succeed in life". From the time that I get to school until I leave, I have this serious attitude about learning. Although it may be true that I hate school (getting up early, travelling, walking across campus several times, dealing with people etc.), I love to learn. I love to know new things and put that knowledge to use in my everyday life.

In addition to being a student at school, when I get home, I am also a student. This happens when I am reviewing what I learnt at school that day and arranging and organizing my notes. I would also spend my whole weekends just doing notes if I have nothing else to do or even stay up until the wee hours of the morning just completing assignments which aren't due til the week after. I hate to have assignments build up; I feel as if I am falling behind if they do.


Gabriella the child.
This may sound odd, but I still have the identity of a child because I believe that life is all about enjoying yourself and still having fantasies. Up to this day, I still believe in unicorns and fairies and I don't care when persons tell me otherwise. I still believe in monsters at night and I have a favourite blanket that I might die without. I still watch cartoons and eat macaroni and cheese. I still ask my mom to kiss my "boo boo" 's when I get hurt and sometimes my friends even say that I sound like a baby when I talk. Sometimes we have to relax and lay back because life is too stressful, and that's when this identity of mine comes out.


Gabriella the teenager.
This identity can relate with other typical teenagers. The perception behind this personality is basically "live fast, die young, no regrets, never look back". It's all about enjoying life now because we never know what could happen or when we are going to die. Life is too precious to be living in the past, we need to be living in the present and appreciate every second of it. Upon the death of one of my friend in July, this identity became stronger than ever. Almost everyday after he died, I was out of my house socializing with my friends and living up every moment of it. Before the curfew was in effect, I would "lime" with my friends until the next morning. Even after the curfew was in effect, we would have "curfew sleepovers" and just have a good time talking a bunch of nonsense, without a care in the world. Basically because of this identity, if I died today, I would be happy because I would know that I spent a great amount of quality time with the people that are closest to me without any regrets.


Gabriella the artist.
This is probably the most prominent identity that I have. It is always present at any given time of the day. The outlook on life that this identity proposes is "we're all just looking for some colour in this life of grey". That means, we're all just looking for some way to shine through uniquely in this world where people are trying to look like others. I experiment on a daily basis with this philosophy. I have done so many things because of this identity, from painting my nails in a certain design to wearing sneakers with dresses. However, I think I express this side of myself mainly through my hair. I have cut it in many various styles, straightened it, let it frizz out, put in highlights, dyed my hair red, bleached my hair blond; some days I would braid one side of my hair and leave the other out - these are all the different ways in which I express myself and I don't care if no one else likes it because all that matters is that I like it.


At the end of the day,
all these identities come together
to make up the person
that I am today,
and I'm okay with that.

Assignment #3: Newspaper Article

For this assignment, I read an article in the Newsday, dated Thursday 22nd September 2011, located on page 5. The title of the article is:

Woman attacked during curfew - Beaten to death

This article was about a domestic dispute between a mother of five and a male friend during curfew hours. It was stated that after this dispute, the male friend got so enraged that he took up a piece of wood and beat the woman to death. After doing this, he surrendered himself to the Chaguanas police station.

An autopsy revealed that the woman died from blunt force trauma to the head.

When the daughter was interviewed, she stated that even though she is in support of the state of emergency to decrease crime, it appears that it is now fueling a different sector of crime - domestic violence related crimes. This woman's death is the 5th domestic violence related death since the state of emergency started a month ago.

The daughter also suggested that her mother probably died as a result of her schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a mental disorder which blurs the line between the real world and the imaginary world making it hard for the person to think logically. Because of this, she probably didn't know how to defend herself properly when she was being attacked.

This is a very sad article and it would suggest that our country is in a mess. It was also stated that this was the 277th murder since the year started. Keeping in mind that only 266 days in the year have passed, at least one person has died everyday this year. What is our country coming to? We are in deep trouble and if something is not done to properly educate the population and instill the correct morals and values, who knows the chaos that could take place in a few years from now?

This also raised a red flag in my mind when it came to the topic of communication. Just the fact that the male companion had to resort to beating and eventually killing the woman because of an argument that they had, would mean that there was ineffective communication. Because of his poor communication skills, the male companion saw that it was necessary to put his mental thoughts into a physical beating.

As a communicator, this influences me to sit down and LISTEN and try to UNDERSTAND my colleague's point of view and what they are trying to say when I am having conversations with them. By all means necessary, I would try to admit when I am wrong and not get enraged. I too, have an anger problem but I would never want it to get as far as killing another living, breathing human being.


Besides, we don't need anymore murders in this country.

Assignment #2: Reaction to 9/11

Ten years ago, on September 11th, 2001, I remember that I was in my Std. 3 class when all hell broke loose. A teacher fell to the floor and screamed that her husband had died in a terrorist attack in New York.


For the rest of the day, there were no classes and everyone was praying for the rest of the day. At only age 7, I didn't quite comprehend what was going on and I didn't see the importance. I even remember making a horrid joke pondering about the significance of her loss when she could just get remarried. However, 10 years later, I realize how much this impacted on society. Many persons lost mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and other loved ones, even persons in Trinidad.

I am a member of the Tumblr society, and on the 10th anniversary of the attack, many persons blogged images of the day. Seeing those images made me wonder how those affected persons could ever recover from that experience. I also wondered how humans could be so inhumane to their fellow man. It occurred to me that persons usually start wars because of misunderstandings and misconceptions in the communication process, but that was as far as I got in my thoughts.

Assignment #1 for my Comm Skills Class

My name is Gabriella ;

If sleeping was in the Olympics, I would take the gold medal ;

On a scale of 1 - 10 of my current communication skills, I would say that I'm a 5.

.. This is because I'm quite shy & I hate people. The reason that I hate people is because within the first 5 seconds of meeting a person, most people, especially in this country (Trinidad), form a prejudice for no reason against that person and I really hate that.

 It's like they're judging you when they don't even know your first name.

My mom says that my problem is that I look intimidating and that I usually mumble my words. Its almost as though I put up this big wall to keep people from talking to me, just because I know for a fact that the majority of them are already wondering why I may seem so antisocial and awkward. My statement is not even an assumption; I have already had encounters where persons randomly come up to me and ask me why I'm antisocial and prefer to be alone by myself in a corner.

My solution to all this nonsense? Simple - Get out of this country ASAP.

.. I'm serious though. I have been to other places outside of Trinidad, including Japan. It's funny though; even though I had to communicate with my hands to the Japanese, they were much friendlier than Trinidadians.


However, if that plan fails, I can just plaster my fake smile and try to talk to others without trying to seem pretentious, ostentatious or creepy as I usually try to do.