Post #5

It was very interesting to see the differences between how I perceive myself and my leadership reputation and how others do. The three people I chose were two of my close friends and my older sister, all of whom know me rather well. However, their responses were significantly different than both how I perceived myself and how I thought others perceived me. Many of the flaws and things that I could work on that I thought were apparent to everyone were not perceived by my friends and sister. I believe that one of the reasons for this is that one of my strengths is being deliberative. Since I tend to be careful with both my words and actions, I usually do not show chinks in my leadership armor, so to speak. Another potential reason is that we tend to be harsher critics of ourselves than of others. While it is probably true that I am occasionally egotistical or pessimistic, the people close to me realize that those characteristics are not emblematic of my leadership style. Alternately, I had never really thought of myself as something like “committed to a common vision” until one of my friends brought up several instances in which I fit exactly that description. This exercise made me realize that my idea of how others perceive me is not necessarily how others actually perceive me. Of course some of the traits lined up, such as intelligent, well informed, or sarcastic, but many of my ideas on how others perceived me came from how I perceive myself. This lets me know that I should strive to get more feedback in both a professional and personal environment, so that I can both better myself as a leader and have a better idea as to how others perceive me as a leader and as a friend.

Post #4

The identity that I find myself most aware of on a daily basis is my race. Although my parents were both born in India, I was born here. This has often left me feeling in some sort of in-between state: not Indian enough for Indian people but not white enough for white people. This element of my identity has probably been most crucial to my development. I went to a high school with an overwhelming white majority, which caused me to hide the more “Indian” parts of myself. Some people referred to me as “the whitest Indian they knew”, which wasn’t an unfair descriptor at the time. It was only after I came to college that I was able to embrace my entire identity, both Indian and American. The identity that I feel provides me with the most privilege is being male. Hearing stories from female friends or my sisters about being harassed or not taken seriously has made me realize how much more valued masculinity is in American culture than femininity. On the other hand, being non-white in a white culture has denied me of some privilege. I believe that privilege plays some role in daily interactions with others, but not as big of a role as it does in the working world. In college, quite a few people are from approximately the same type of background. This is even truer if you begin to hang out with people in the same major, or working at the same co-op, or who have the same interests. However, after college I feel that privilege will definitely play a larger role in the everyday conversations that I have with other people. People tend to jump to snap judgments about others, and from that dynamic it is easy to see that privilege will play a role in everyday interactions, especially with strangers.