Personal Narrative: The Perception Of Women

The social norm I broke is making too much eye contact, or staring excessively, at my teachers. While sitting in class, I stared at my teachers more than I stared at my paper or looked around the classroom. It is usually normal for students to stare down at their desks and not look at the teacher a lot.

“You’re pretty for someone who has dark skin.” I stood there in the middle of my 10th grade English class, stunned. Trying to fathom whether or not to accept it or acknowledge it was a backhanded compliment. I sat there thinking to myself did this other student who shares the same color skin as me, just feel the need to associate my beauty despite my color? This was just one of many times in my life I had encountered phrases like that, but that day in my English class, I realized society had created a social norm that just wasn't going to sit right with me.

I was six, I knew that we couldn’t stay one place forever. That concept was foreign. Every few years my family and I were stationed to a new place, this time 45 minutes away. Of course, being the stubborn and impatient six year old I was, that seemed a light year away. I have never had friends that lasted over 3 years. Either they left, or I moved. This time, I left first. My friends were my world. I was happy. They were devastated to get the news of my departure. Tears were mixed with the “goodbyes”, and the occasional “I’ll never forget you”.

Is usual to hear people associating common behaviors from a cultural background to how they expect an individual to act and react to certain situations. So I was really curious to see the results of the self-assessment comparing me to my cultural profile. I was born in Venezuela, and I lived there for most of my life, for that reason I wasn’t really surprised when my answers were almost the same to my cultural norm. The dimensions that I’m most similar to are in leading, trusting, disagreeing, evaluating, and persuading. In “leading”, the scale measures between egalitarian and hierarchical, and my cultural norm and individual answer is more hierarchical than egalitarian. Also, in “trusting” Venezuelans (including me) are definitely a relationship based society, where trust is built by affective connection, for example is very common that most of the business partnerships in Venezuela are made between friends and family rather than with individuals with

Over the past week, I went into an elevator and stood with my back to the doors as I face everybody. I had the perfect opportunity to test this out when my cousin was in the hospital having her baby. Before completing this task, I felt nervous and shy to violate this social norm. During this task, I felt very uncomfortable and embarrassed, like I was doing something wrong. But after, I thought it was so funny that I was so nervous. I got many different reactions while completing this task. I received many blank stares, confused looks, and many looked like they were going to burst out into laughter. And some people didn’t even make eye contact with me and to say the least, it was an awkward situation. After this experiment was over, I explained

Sometimes there are books that are so hyped up that you just wonder if they're really all that good. Sometimes you find yourself disappointed, the only person out of your bookish friends who dislikes said book. Other times, you find yourself amidst the endless number of fangirls and fanboys, and you join them in shouting praises of the book off the nearest rooftop. For me, Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda was the latter.

A famous actor once stated “But I learned that there’s a certain character that can be built from embarrassing yourself endlessly. If you can sit happy with embarrassment, there's not much else that can really get to ya.” However, I did not quite agree with the man when I was embarrassed directly in front of my friends and adults. That day I will never forget, I had made the biggest fool out of myself, and I had just given proof to the stories about women being terrible drivers.

This summer I had the privilege of being accepted to attend an eleven day, women-only, leadership conference taking place in Boston, MA. Women from all around the world gathered to collect knowledge from presentations and lectures hosted in the halls of Harvard and various other prestigious colleges and universities near Boston, eloquently delivered from the likes of Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III and Councilor Ayanna Pressley. At the end of the conference, each person presents their ‘action plan’ explaining how they are going to make a difference.

Until six months ago, I was not a feminist. Yet I wasn’t exactly not one either. If asked, I’d probably say sure--I guess. (What’s the alternative, a bigot?). Mostly, though, I was indifferent. My political preoccupation was economics, and social issues seemed distant in importance.

How many of you have something at work that you don’t like to do? Something that you knowingly avoid until you have to force yourself to complete it? I know that I have a couple things that I didn’t enjoy doing, or things that I wasn’t very good at. When I first started working here at Clickstop I was in MFG doing the packaging portion of things. I always tried to push myself to be the fastest at everything that I packed. Everything except for Old Dominion.

For me there is no one setting in which I am surrounded by people whose beliefs differ from mine. As an intersectional feminist I believe that all women should be able to live and walk through the world unaffected by prejudice, or fear of being attacked the same way that men do. This includes women of color, lesbian and transgender women. I am the gay son of two Mexican born parents so I think that I have faced my share of bias. Consequently, to me, this thing about women is simple. Easy to understand and agree with. However, in a very short amount of time I have come to find that there is no shortage of people all around me that disagree with these simple facts. In my experience, school contains the biggest supply of such people. No big deal, only the place that I stay in for eight hours a day to learn and work in.

When I went for the interview the girls over there were really friendly and welcoming. A past co-worker of mine from a previous job was working at my current job and she told mw about it. The place that I was the doctor was a mess, awesome doctor but awful as a boss and he had no benefits what so ever. In this new place that I am now they have a 401k plan, insurance, 80 hours of paid vacation after 90 days of employment, aflac and a health savings account. When they offered me the job and told me all those benefits that I did not had before and their salary is more competitve I couldn't say

Flying across the world at the age of 6, a new continent, city, language, and people. That's how my life began. First Time seeing an airplane my thoughts where do they have cartoons, and how will I play on the airplane. So many questions, I wanted to ask but I remained quite. I was scared, worried, happy, sad so many feelings at once. But hey that's how my story will begin. When I moved to the US, I was scared and felt lost But all I wanted to do is build myself from the ground, because I was building my future. But with a great experience I was either going to make me or break me.

I saw it on this feminist page and it was something like don’t be that girl that pressures guys because erections aren’t consent and it’s rape… I don’t even know why that made me think of you but I think the whole message came more from my head than anything. I just haven’t been doing too well lately, it’s more accurate to say I’m not in a good place at all actually. I have a great social life and the lowest grade I have in my five classes is an 80% so I don’t understand why I hurt so much, but I’ve been finding it harder and harder to keep going. What always held me back before was my family but home is so bad right now that I might just be doing them a favor. So right now it’s knowing my cat depends on me and the fear of the afterlife that

Coming from being raised a household full of women and most of my extended family being female as well. I noticed I have a bit of issue with connecting with boys. I am good with girls and with children who share my introvert temperament, however, these energetic boys really either do not like me or don't like approached to them by just talking. I am used to talking to connect with others, but I know I need to do different strategies with these boys. So any suggestions will be