Assignment 8- Sheridan Wagner

Fears: Failure, judgement, not being able to save someone/ stop something, mortality

Annoyances: Judgement, the phrase “I hate,” being rushed, assumptions

Accomplishments: Head chorister of my choir, Wind Ensemble, test scores, not crashing and burning thus far

Confusions: Why people hate in general, why it’s a requirement to be social, how people can just say something without thinking about it first

Sorrows: That I can’t be the best at the things I do well, social anxiety

Dreams: To be successful, to make something/ someone better off, to not get stuck or give up

Idiosyncrasies: Pensive, tend to overthink everything

Risks: Not saying everything I want to, I want to go white water rafting

Beloved Possessions, Now and Then: Random collections of stuff (then), my flute (now)

Problems: Social anxiety, procrastination, thinking too much about the future

I’ve grown up in a very judgmental family. I love them to death and I know that they love me, it’s just that most of my family members have always been extremely opinionated and quick to make assumptions. And my family is huge. There are about 25 family members that I see at least once a week and nearly all of them are quick to argue, quick to support their opinions as if it were the only possible correct one in all of existence and they immediately know that all others are wrong and automatically assume any argument supporting a different view is inferior. A lot of them just like to argue to argue. My dad for example loves to play the devil’s advocate towards every opinion I present and over the years I have just stopped expressing any of my emotional opinions. Logical opinions, ones that I have no emotional tie to what so ever, I’m fine. I just first make sure that I have enough practical evidence to defend my claim.

In this environment I soon became the black sheep in this side of my family. I have always been quick to accept that everyone is different and that you can’t expect everyone to support your views and when they don’t that doesn’t give you permission to diminish the importance of their opinion. I don’t judge based on first impressions. It takes a while before I actually begin to form an image of what a person is like and even afterwards that image is changeable. Because I don’t automatically form an opinion about someone, it’s sort of off putting when other people judge me.