Cody Summers posted to Demetrice Spearman:
"Fool, your like an icon in Georgetown haha I say I go to SU and the first thing that comes out their mouth is "Hey you know Dee right?" it is crazy!"
Everywhere we go somebody knows Dee.. walking somewhere that should take 5 minutes can take 20 minutes when he runs into someone and trust me he always does whether it is another student, a professor, a faculty member, or a parent
EVERYONE LOVESDEE.
To be known as a good self monitor one must have an ability for people to change their behavior in response to the context they are placed (Snyder, 1987). Dee often admits to having this ability.
"I know how to adapt to my surrounding. Depending on the situation I know how to act and what to say!"
-Demetrice Spearman
Along with his ability to adapt to his surroundings, Dee has also found himself a little acting career. This is Dee and some of his other co-workers on the set of Friday Night Lights.
Q: How is being able to act related to self-monitoring?
A: Snyder's research in self-monitoring (1974) shows that individuals who are high self-monitors agree with the statement "In different situations and with different people, I often act like very different persons." as well as the statement "I would probably make a good actor."
Although it can be a little difficult being the girlfriend of such a great self-monitor (because I myself am way less of one), I believe that it a overall good thing. He is a great person and lets be real: It is not always about what you have but about who you know.
Between school, work, and sleep there is hardly enough time in the day. I am always busy doing homework, stirring yogurt (I work at Yogo Bowl), or doing whatever else there is to be done like cook, eat, clean, and study.
Although I am in a great relationship,
I often don't have time to read between the lines.
One morning, as I rolled out of bed to grab my assigned readings that I had to read before class and had fallen asleep to the night before, Dee mentioned that he was hungry and wanted fruit from The Commons. I told him that I had some reading to do but I would get ready and we could go as soon as I was done. As time went on Dee had gotten some animal crackers to snack on and had began some homework as well. When I finished my readings I asked if he still wanted to go to The Commons and his reply was "It doesn't matter to me". Because he was doing homework and did not appear to be in any rush to go get some fruit before class I assumed that we were no longer going to do so. When 9:50 came around we began to walk to class and our conversation went something like this:
Me: "I should have gotten some animal crackers before we left. I am kinda hungry!"
Dee: "We should have just gone to The Commons to get some fruit like we had planned!"
Me: "I didn't know you wanted to go so bad. You had been snacking and it didn't seem like you were in any rush to go? You know what time we have to leave before class so you should have said something!"
Dee: "I said I wanted to go this morning and when you asked me I didn't say no!"
Me: "You said it didn't matter?"
Dee: "Well I just thought I made it obvious..."
As social beings, we often have a tendency to misjudge the extent to which our emotions are detectable by others and believe that our feelings are more clearly expressed to others then they truly are. This tendency is referred to as The Illusion of Transparency (Gilovich, Savitsky, & Medvec, 1998). The story above is just one example of how The Illusion of Transparency has been displayed in my life; trust me there are MANY more! Being in a relationship can sometimes be stressful and the fact that we think we show our emotions more then we do can make it that much more difficult. Despite the confusion it may cause, The Illusion of Transparency is an easily detectable concept and once understood can make it easier to read between the lines. I believe that the knowledge I have gained about The Illusion of Transparency will lead to a lot less bickering and a lot less of this song being repeated on my play list... haha
--sing this song when you are mad and tell me it doesn't make everything better--
Gilovich, T., Savitsky, K., & Medvec, V.H. (1998). The illusion of transparency: Biased assessments of others' ability to read our emotional states. Journal or Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 332-346.
Growing up I always dreamed of being a longhorn. As a senior in high school, as I was getting ready for college, The University of Texas was the only place I saw myself going and UT was the first college to receive an application from me. Although the many college fairs, the many college visits, and the many lectures about the disadvantages of going to a college so close to home I was set on going there. I was ecstatic! (Maybe as excited as Casey was when she got her first cell phone? http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=529768827247?) Me! Bernaddette! FINALLY going to college! FINALLY getting to be a longhorn! YAY:)
Somehow I ended up here… at good ol’ southwestern.
The beginning of my freshman year in college sucked. Over half of the graduating class from my high school went to UT and reading their facebook statuses about how they loved college made me want to smash my computer over one of my suite mate’s head (yea, I said it)! I was the only one from my school to come to southwestern and the atmosphere here definitely took some getting used to (to say the least).
At the time, my decision to come to Southwestern was something I tremendously regretted.
This was supposed to be me:
(If I would have gone to UT maybe the boy who has been cropped out of this picture would not have also been cropped out of my life?)
Day in and day out I imagined how life would be if I was a longhorn, if classes were big and easy, if I was near all my friends and family, and how my life would be if the events that led me to come to Southwestern would have been different.
Counterfactual thinking is a tendency to imagine what life would be like if certain events or outcomes (that did not happen) would have happened. Neal Roese and Amy Summerville (2005) found that the top three things people tend to regret in life are decisions about education, careers, and romance.
Although I once regretted coming to southwestern, I am now very grateful to have been given the opportunity to get such a great education. Fortunately I no longer regret my decision and I am a proud pirate!
Regret is a heavy burden to carry… I knew that all too well. I once imagined how good it would feel to sing this song and mean it.. and now I can... I love college:)
I used to hear that song every Friday night as we jogged into the gym to begin our warm up before the game and yup that’s what they called me “the power house” of the team. I played basketball since I was four years old. I started off with the YMCA and as I got older I played for various select teams. When I got to high school I was good enough to play ball for the varsity team and at the end of the year banquet my coach described me as the power house... the name stuck.
A lot of different things changed after my sophomore year in high school and my family began to fall apart. I was forced to quit the sport that I loved with all my heart and that was it for me and basketball for a long time. I couldn’t play it on the streets... I couldn’t watch it on TV... my heart would break every time I would even look at a ball.
Needless to say when intramurals came along my freshman year here at SU I was asked to play basketball several times so I finally gave in. I was rusty, yes, but I continued to work on my game and when intramurals came along my sophomore year we were a tough team to beat.
My boyfriend (Demetrice Spearman) plays basketball for the men's team. We joked around at the beginning of the summer about how I should play basketball for the school but by the end of the summer I was determined to make basketball “my everything” again. We worked hard. He helped me with my shot, jab-step, fakes, dribbling… with pretty much everything really and I started to look like the old me again.
I went to talk to the coach about being on the team and playing pick-up with the girls and that’s when everything changed.
The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy is a process by which a perceiver’s expectations about a person lead that person behaving in ways that confirm the perceiver’s expectations. Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson (1968) explored this concept when studying teacher’s expectations of their students. The results from their research showed that teacher’s expectations influence student performance. For example, when certain children were thought to be more capable of intellectual growth than others, although randomly selected, these students had a significant increase in their IQ compared to other children in a control group (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968).
The expectations I was held too did not affect me in the classroom but on the court and unfortunately the only increase I experienced was an increase in my desire to stay far away from the basketball court once again.
When I went to go talk to the basketball coach she wasn’t very excited about my interests in playing on the team. I tried to convince her of my love for the sport but I feel as though she doubted me because I was a junior and hadn’t played for a team in so long. Her doubts were understandable, I was a junior trying to walk on to her varsity team, but it was those doubts that lead to my own doubts.
I went to watch the girls play pick-up that night after I had spoke with the coach. She ended up showing up to make an announcement to the team and although I was in the gym I was not called over like the rest of the girls. I overheard her telling them about how they needed to warn their professors about a game they would be away for during finals week, but that wasn’t the important part, the important part was that as I stood there in the gym watching her talk to the girls I saw her and I also saw a team, a team that I wasn’t a part of.
That day was the last day that I picked up a ball as well as the last day that I have even worked out. Sadly, her expectations of me were that I would not be able to handle playing on the team and the idea of me actually being able to is fading further and further away. Although I love the sport, I think my basketball career is officially done with.
Despite the fact that she has never seen me play, the coach’s expectations and actions lead to my own self doubt and behavior that has set my progress back tremendously.
Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom: Teacher expectation and pupils' intellectual development. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
