ohhMyWord! (iforgotabout) Ch.3

Hope I'm not too late~

Authentic self vs. Performance self

I didn't even know there were two such types you can identify with. I agree for the most part with Blum on the key concepts for each type. In chapter three, Blum described, "Groups are anathema to the authentic self, because participating in a group requires compromise, while authenticity requires consistent loyalty to one’s own principles.” If the authentic type prefers isolation, then I would find myself as the performance type because I enjoy working with other people. Another thing that stood out to me was that “authentic selves would never plagiarize because they believe to their core that all they say should be theirs and theirs alone.” I mean, c’mon!? I don’t think that’s totally true to say even though they want to be original, there’s the possibility of them plagiarizing unintentionally. When Blum discussed the performance type, it kind of seemed like it was the supposed "bad" one. I can see how that's so because we went over the cons as well as the pros in class, but still no type should be superior to the other. The bad things that were mentioned were: the likelihood of plagiarizing and the point that it’s appearance-based. My group covered the pros – being goal-oriented (school), making own writing much better with the use of others’, getting the grade.

I believe everyone would want to be the authentic type, able to be truly honest to their word. You want other people to admire you as so rather than frowned upon as a cheater or whatever. I want to say I’m the authentic type and that only, but then I’d be lying. Most likely I’m in the area between both types, as well as many other students. I don’t think you can be just one type.. I like having uniqueness, and being able to speak for myself, but I also like to just do whatever gets the job done or suits the occasion. I guess I tend to lean more on performance type than the other simply because I do care mostly about the final result, and the grade I get in the end. Plus, I know I don’t always feel “connected” with everything I write. It doesn’t mean that I don’t ever want to go beyond the expectations or think plagiarizing is acceptable though.

I think what Blum stated on p. 89 that "The performance self is more prone to cheat and plagiarize than the authentic self. . .For a performance self, intellectual property is a quaint yet meaningless notion." is partly right, but I wouldn’t agree with the last part.

I couldn’t laugh more at one of the quotes Blum included, which was said by Lawrence Lessig in Free Culture, “We live in a ‘cut and paste’ culture enabled by technology.” Actually it shouldn’t be funny, but I agree that technology does have a major affect on how/what we do especially in/for school. Also mentioned in the chapter, Wikipedia, a widely read and used site filled with information, was an interesting read.. When you search up something, let’s say chocolate, the first link or so would most likely be from Wikipedia! I remember one of my high school teachers didn’t allow us to use it for one of our assignments, probably because he didn’t think it was entirely accurate (not that it is).