Writing my paper... under protest

For someone like me who likes to think up theories and ponder the reality of the situation, I actually hate writing reflection papers. Well, I hate writing them in APA format, with cited references, justifying every thought carefully. Let me flow, baby, let me flow!

My paper is a reflection on what I learned during my time in Bethel at the Use of Self class. I've been noodling the paper since I got back over a week ago, but I just finally put thoughts to paper last night. I'm 3 pages into a 7-10 limit, and things seem to be going well. I have a lot of written journal entries that I'm weeding through to add richness to the theory.

Three patterns that I saw in myself that week during my experiences were: accommodation, apology, and hiding in the cohort. I'm still searching to determine if accommodation is the correct word, but I am defining it as someone who puts everyone else's needs a head of their own, and defers to others to make happiness abundant. The theme of apology ties into that nicely, as one conclusion I have drawn about my accommodating comes from a strong sense of guilt. My research for my "A Paper" (as it was called in the syllabus) in a previous class discussed children growing up in a guilty household, and one sign of that in adulthood is someone who apologizes all the time. It is ingrained in my speech pattern so strongly that I don't even realize I say it. It's almost my interruption phrase, instead of "excuse me," when I want my opinion heard. "I'm sorry, but..." Or I use it when I want to disagree, or if at any time I interrupt any one's agenda. I got called out on it by Edie Seashore during the class, and I never really heard myself do it until then.

As for hiding in the cohort... I'm not myself in it. I don't know where that is coming from, but I am shy and tentative. In most groups I'm not - especially groups where I have authority and competence. I think it's my own confidence in knowing the material and sharing what I think I'm learning out-loud in the group. I wait to see if my thoughts are in line with the other people before speaking - to make sure that I haven't jumped the track. I'm a very strong iNutitive on MBTI - which means that I can easily see things that other's don't - which has gotten me in trouble in literature classes all my life. Not that this is literature, but when we were always asked for interpretations of stories, mine never matched what most everyone else saw - and rarely what the teacher saw - which got me a B... not an A. I learned to keep quiet and take my cues from the other students in order to improve my grades. Now that I'm back in an educational environment, I'm falling back into that pattern.

Wow... I just wrote out that part of my paper... well, I'll make it fancy of course, but now that I have that theory out, it'll be easier to write. Why do we need to do 7-10 pages, when I just so nicely did it in about 2? CHOICE - CHOICE - CHOICE... that's what we learned strongly up in Bethel, everything is our choice. We choose how we want to feel, we choose our behavior, and we can choose our reactions to situations. I can take everything in and weed out what I don't want... but if I want an A, then I have bullshit for a bunch more pages.