Thine Own Self

One cannot be happy and successful if they are not confident as other people are going to have a hard time in believing and accepting them if they themselves are not ready to accept ones selves. Although everyone have their own weaknesses and certain challenges to overcome, pointing it out and complaining about it is unavailing. The key is to accept what one has and embrace it to overcome the toughest of obstacles and challenges. This is what defines as success. “Being happy…

“Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror” by John Ashbery is a work of convoluted reflections engaging Renaissance painter Parmigiano, his painting “Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror”, Ashbery himself, and the soul. The poem’s source of inspiration is a physical piece of art, suggesting the poem belongs in the ekphrasis tradition. Immediate tension arises as the painting and the poem belong to vastly different traditions. The technique of ekphrasis in a postmodern tradition has challenged scholars as it…

early memories, and a love for adventure and new discoveries, lie beneath the colors of new experience. Identity as a whole in continuous and changing, however that underlying element of constancy beneath the changing surface keeps our perception of self deeply rooted in where we originate. Initial memories formed from our environment act as the first layer of color on our canvas, blending into subsequent hues, influencing the new colors and experiences of the oeuvre. As in Wilde’s depiction…

Late: Towards the end of my adolescence I wanted much deeper relationships and I wanted to find friends that shared personal values and morals similar to my own. I became a social butterfly once again, but had no motive become the popular kid in school. c. Cognitive: i. Beginning: I hated learning. I enjoyed going to school but I was always scared to make myself look dumb that I never really participated…

dialectic of the life and death struggle elaborates on a social phenomenon commonly observed in communal life and throughout history. The life and death struggle is a fight for recognition experienced by individuals in a state of desire. In this state, self-consciousness becomes more aware of the external world and views the other as an object - an external reality. The complication here is that recognition, by nature, is reciprocal. Therefore, not all external realities provide the same…

these deficits, allowing adolescents to fully focus on more stimulating material. The tests used to observe the relationship between media multitasking and executive function may have skewed results due to self-reports that were measured. Whereas, individuals may have focused more on their self-schema about their ability to focus attention, and were more likely to report larger numbers when remarking on their executive function problems (Baumgartner et. al., 2014). The cross-sectional design of…

NW, Zadie Smith portrays Keisha Blake’s loyalty and disloyalty among friends and lovers, but she overall depicts her struggle to remain loyal to her own identity. Through Keisha Blake’s changing image and relationship to her identity, Zadie Smith explores how outside forces can shape an identity and complicate an individual’s connection to their own identity. Keisha Blake changes her name to Natalie in order to escape the literal definition of her name, “loyalty,” which emphasizes her struggle…

larger toll on the individual than previously thought. In her book, Turkle makes a balanced argument that technology’s ubiquity and permanence in the 21st-century American society, frails the self and our individuality. Throughout the book,…

Once the reader reaches the end of the article, it is apparent that recognizing and understanding sexual identity and the role parents play in their child’s sense of self. The article was well-written and has an important message for parents of LGB teens and counselors who handle this particular subset of family counseling. The article, when taken as a whole, is very convincing and the information is relevant to current…

“Mirror Image”: External and Internal Identity In the short story “Mirror Image”, Lena Coakley explores the relationship between internal and external identity through the life of the first successful recipient of a brain transplant. Alice, 14, has been given a new chance at life after a near fatal accident rendered her body useless; Alice’s brain has been transplanted into the body of another young girl. In the time following, Alice struggles to come to terms with who she is, now that her…