My Word Chapter 3

Susan Blum’s description of the authentic self and the performance self is totally accurate. I believe that everyone have both these “types” within themselves. There are certainly some people who are either one extreme or the other. I do not relate more with one or the other because I think I am in between both of these types.

I am the type of person whose personality is pretty consistent with everyone. My core beliefs do not change depending on whom I am with. What I think is “good” or “bad” is pretty much set. I related a lot to Edward in chapter 3. He said he was “his own person although he got crazier among his friends” (p.72). That is how I am, like he explained it is all about how comfortable you are in a particular situation. I don’t “act” reserved among new people, I am that person when put in that situation. I am still being true to the person that I am. This is a gray in between the two types. The authentic self should be genuine (which I am) and act the same in every situation. This is simply unrealistic though; we always change according to situations or settings. We cannot behave how we behave with our friends with our professors and I guess this is what makes me have qualities of the performance self.

Blum described the authentic type to have concepts such as, “own, genuine, essence and integral”. I definitely have these concepts especially when it comes to my writing. In my writing I do all that I can to sound original, that the words I genuinely created are my own. I do read other people’s work and try to get ideas on how I am going to write but I always try and make it my own. Going back to the in class essay, I try to be original in my academic writing. In this case I fall into the authentic self “type” when it comes to writing. I also want to the get the good grade, so this is sometimes difficult to be authentic and not the performer. I have been in situations where I have to write in a certain style to make my teacher’s like my work and ultimately get a good grade in the class. As to what is more important, being true in your writing or getting a good grade in the class it is possible that maybe getting a good grade in the class is more important to the student. This is what makes it difficult for students to be authentic and may resort to being more of the performer self.

According to Blum’s quote, the performer self is more prone to cheat and plagiarize than the authentic self. This is quite difficult to agree or disagree just because people are not just performers or authentic but more of a mix of the two. But if we are talking about the two different extremes I agree that the performer is self is more prone to cheat/plagiarize. To them it is about “looking good” rather than being authentic to themselves.