Journal #5

This week I have been trying to decide what I was going to do to go against the social norms in order to observe non-verbal communication to write my final paper about. I am not an overly outgoing kind of person, so I'll admit that the thought of breaking a social norm was VERY uncomfortable for me! I read over the chapters in the book hoping I could come up with something that wouldn't cause myself too much discomfort. I'm sure that is part of the experiment, but it's hard to put yourself out there like that when it makes you that uncomfortable. I'm sure many of you are thinking, "What's the big deal?" but for someone that hid behind her mother's legs for the majority of her growing years, this was asking a lot. Since there are very few elevators in Cedar City, standing facing the wrong direction was not really an option, and I'm not really sure how you observe reactions when you can't see the other people around you either. While I found the chapters interesting, they weren't much help in finding the social norm to break. I did finally figure something out and performed the experiment. In spite of my fears, it was actually an interesting experience and I learned some things about myself doing it. The first was that I can do this kind of thing even though I felt like my anxiety was going to kill me, and second that I actually liked the majority of the reactions I received. Who knows, this may actually help me step out of my comfort zone more often.