2. Analysis

Again, I am choosing to draw back on material I wrote last year because last year the final piece I wrote for school was a personal internal analysis on how I believe I operate. I thought it might be valuable for any readers to have this, in order to be able to understand me better as a person and a writer. The context of this writing assignment was to be an OP, a quarterly paper we would write and then read to the class. The only characteristic of an OP was only that it had to be about a topic we were currently dealing with.

A Look at Drew Sylvester

I’m not quite sure how I appear to others, but I feel like often times I am perceived as an awkward and shy guy. While this notion certainly has merit, it is my belief that it’s not entirely true. There’s more to the story than just being shy. I am without a doubt reserved, but I’m not reserved because I don’t like talking and/or have nothing to say. In fact the opposite is true. I love talking and I have everything to say. My introverted character hinges on the fact that I don’t enjoy carrying on random and trivial conversations. I like having a purpose in what I say. Compounding this fact, is the added effect of having too much to say. Whether that surprises some of you or not, I don’t know, but it’s true. I internalize everything I observe and therefore have a lot to discuss.

I would estimate that I probably only communicate about 2% of what I have to say on a daily basis. Everything else I just internalize. Part of the reason for this is simply because I’m not presented with the opportunity to discuss what I want and I don’t like spontaneously bringing up topics. It’s just not how my character works. I work very systematically, and don’t like making random jumps out of my line. The other part of this problem is simply that I don’t know how to verbalize everything that I think. Even as an example of this, I am having difficulty trying to vocalize the problem I face in a manner that is understandable to all of you right now.

Once again I’ll split up this specific problem into two underlying factors. The first of which is the easier to understand. My family consists of 6 members: my parents, my older sister, my older brother, my younger sister, and myself. Out of my siblings, my older sister and I are the most similar, while my brother and younger sister are similar in their temperaments. As I described to Ms. Volksen in the first assignment of the year, my brother’s character plays a vital role in defining who I am. Jared is an incredibly outgoing, talkative and fun person to be around. I can’t think of anyone who doesn’t enjoy being around my brother, apart from teachers that is (although even they like his personality, just not what they see as his disruptiveness). Jared is basically my opposite: he is absolutely comfortable around others, can talk easily, and is naturally athletic (among other things). The fact that he is my opposite is what I’m getting at though. He is my opposite because that is what I allowed. I am not an assertive person, so when I was born into my family I simply filled the role that was open, rather than competing with my brother. This involved me becoming the listener and observer; a role that I still fill today, within my family, and within life in general. As I expressed in my paper earlier this year, I am not in the least disappointed with this role, I love who I am. Nor am I expressing resentment towards my brother for pushing me into this role. I love my brother, and he is the person I have looked up to most my whole life. This is just part of the explanation for why I am who I am.

As I said previously, my difficulty in verbalizing ideas is due to two factors, the second of which is the more difficult to explain. I have limitless thoughts floating around in my mind, but when it comes time to express them, I fall short. It seems to me in retrospect, as if the English language doesn’t suffice. Which seems absurd to say, but it’s the closest description I can come to. For those of you who have read the Eragon books by Christopher Paolini, I feel as if my mind would be much better suited to the type of communication Eragon and his dragon have, one in which words aren’t essential, but where emotions, feelings and images are shared via their thoughts. Thus, the entire thought is communicated, not just fragments, which is what seems to happen to me. Everything I try to say is infinitely better in my mind. The general scenario involved with my difficulty is that as I try to communicate my ideas, I grasp for the ideas and only end up holding on to a portion of the original thought. Despite the risk of seeming even crazier than I probably already sound, I’ll throw in this final example. Within the confines of my own mind I probably engage in 10-30 monologue discussions on a daily basis. Just to clarify, I’m not like a mad scientist. I would describe it as more of a computer playing through possible scenarios of an event. In my case, I will usually run through certain events in my life, whether from that day, perceived future events, or past events, and play through what are virtually what-if situations. They almost always involve me changing what I said, and playing through what the conversation might have looked like, or more often than not, saying something instead of nothing at all and then playing out the rest of the situation.

Somehow, this OP ended up a lot stranger than I originally intended, but that virtually proves my whole argument: I can’t communicate as well as I would want to. Hopefully, you were able to follow my path well enough to make sense of what I said. My intent for this OP was to clear up possible misconceptions of who I am, and how I operate, so to speak. We only have one year left together, and I don’t want to walk away from all of our time together misunderstood.