Student 10

December 14, 2000

Self-Portrait

Athletic, happy, relaxed, and practical are the main components of my personality. I have analyzed myself and constructed a self-portrait. This project displays traits I store inside myself. I relate to the theories of Freud, music of the Romantics, and pupa colors of the Yoruba culture.

In class, I learned about Freud and his theories about the self. He believes that body behavior shows what is on the inside of an individual. I am truly like that. Anyone can tell how I am feeling by looking at me on the outside. I display me feelings with facial expressions, the way I present myself, and body gestures. If I am happy, I smile a great deal, dress nicer, and act more relaxed. Freud also theorized about a person's ego, id, and superego. My desires, my id, are usually fulfilled when I am being active. I love sports so when I am playing my id is satisfied. Sports have become a fix for me. I feel bad if I don't take part in some energetic activity at least once a day. Vigorous activity relaxes me and makes me feel better. My superego involves the moral restrictions I have. I know my parents have always taught me to be persistent with my studies. That helps explain the down to earth side of my personality. Freud said that obsessive-compulsive disorder was something that also explains the self as being Freudian. I am definitely Freudian in that sense. I set my alarm clock at night before I get in bed. Once I get in bed, I check it again. Then I say my prayers and check it again. This happens every time I go to sleep, so I consider myself Freudian for this reason. In my self- exploration, I don't find any Jung qualities that relate to my self or my personality. I feel I am completely Freudian.

Music of the Romantic period also explains parts of my self. Lizst and Beethoven have music that displays how I act the majority of the time. Their music had dissonance, contrasts, leaps, and sudden notes throughout their pieces of work. I am a person that leaps from engaging in one activity to the next. I stay active most of the time. I am also spontaneous in that I do things all of a sudden when I get the urge. Sometimes, I do things that are very different from each other, which is symbolic of the contrasts in their music. I may be running and listening to slow, soothing music. That is because my id is being satisfied so I am relaxed and soothed while running.

When we studied the Yoruba culture, my ring was comprised of mostly pupa colors. I feel that I am still mostly described as pupa, but have discovered I am a lot more fun-fun and dudu than what I had originally thought. I am mostly passionate, but can become hot-tempered easily. However, through class and my self-survey, I have many practical, down to earth, and cool-tempered qualities I was unaware of. Once I thought about these qualities more intensively, I found out more about myself. I am fun-fun, blue, when I am reading God's word or at church involved in spiritual activities. I am more dudu, green, when I am studying and doing my class work for college. But overall, I still find myself mostly pupa, red and yellow, when I am athletic and competing against other individuals. I am also pupa when I am happy and being dainty.

My self-portrait has four circles on top of a cube. Each circle represents a different trait I contain. The red circle includes different sports on it to represent my self when I am active and may become hot-tempered. The yellow circle represents my passionate side when I am elegant and happy. The green circle represents my down to earth personality when I am studying and taking care of my college work. Finally the blue circle represents me when I am cool and more relaxed, like when I am spiritually involved with God. These four circles turn in a circular motion to display how all of my qualities mix together to form my self as a whole. These circles are displayed on top of a cube. This cube represents the stable part of my personality. I try to always be my self and this is what the foundation of my project represents. On the front and back of the base are two bigger circles with all four colors, red, yellow, green, and blue, on them separated by a cross. These bigger circles represent what I am all about. Each color is a triangle and they symbolize my goals. The cross symbolizes the cross roads in my life that sometimes get in the way of my goals, representative of having the cross between the triangles. On the other sides of the cube are words that I have placed diagonally to symbolize the tension in my life sometimes. Even though I am dependable, stable, practical, and down to earth as an individual, at times stress is brought on and I become tense in situations. I have represented this by placing these words diagonally. In comparison to the project on shapes we did early on this semester, I find that I am the same. I have mostly circles and squares in my project and the triangles and the cross. I didn't put any spiral shape on my self-portrait because that is not involved in my personality. Concluding this, I feel I have not changed during the course of this class.

My self-portrait tells all about me. I love to stay active and if I do, then my id is satisfied and I remain happy. In constructing my project, I did learn I had more good qualities than what I was completely aware of. I feel I have analyzed my self and displayed my results best I could in this self-portrait given what all I have learned this semester.

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