It wasn’t the assignment I was expecting on the second day of classes: complete introspection in global awareness class. But if we’re expected to know how to read a map of New York City, I guess it makes sense to have a map of myself.
I have a friend who would have had no problems whatsoever with this project. She helped me draft an English essay a few weeks ago with a technique just like this; rattling off ideas that built off each other, drawing lines to connect everything. She calls them “bubble charts”, and they’re just how she thinks. But for me, the hardest part of this assignment wasn’t trying to draw connections between bits and pieces of myself that makes me who I am or trying to narrow down what could fit on this sheet of paper. It was the opposite: I didn’t know what would be a big enough concept to make a large part of this visual depiction of myself.
I struggled quite a bit to fill out this map; there were the obvious parts that are central to who I am- “almost a doctor” is the tagline of both my WordPress sites and one of my Tumblr blogs, so there was never a question that I was going to include that. It got harder as I had to branch out from the six main points, adding information about how I’d identify as a cat person or have a wealth of trivia that no one expects me to know.
This activity affirmed how I approach life- most of the traits that came to mind first were academically-based (i.e: school and career focuses) and it was incredibly difficult for me to branch into anything emotional or close to a hobby. But the biggest thing I took from the conversation was how it was really difficult to encapsulate who we are on a sheet of paper, as we are all the sum of experiences that can’t be verbalized.
