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Studio HW 3

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7 views3 pages

Studio HW 3

Uploaded by

jeffreyjameswerdel
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Assignment #3

Social intelligence is something that I have been familiar with for many years

now. My first job was a cashier at a gas station when I was 16. Up until that point I had

lived a very “sheltered life”. My only interactions came from people within my

neighborhood/school district. I did not have to work for someone who was not my

parents, and most of my social conversations were ones that I chose for myself. When I

started my job it was a moment of enlightenment. It was the first time I have had to

spend eight hours around people that were in completely different life and economic

situations compared to me. Within the first week of the job I got yelled at for making

mistakes, ignored for being the new guy, and was made fun of because on my job

application I put that I played sports for my highschool. I could have cracked, quit the

job and gone back to a sheltered existence, but in that first week I came to a self

realization. I am a strong individual capable of overcoming adversity and adjusting to a

new environment. In that moment my brain told me one thing but my mind told me

another. This was my first hit of social intelligence and I only realized it after years of

reflection. Being able to have self-understanding of yourself and situations is the

bed-rock for having a high social intelligence. Being able to listen to your instincts,

process them, then act is what separates high from low EQ. I took two of the tests

offered within the assignment. One resulted in a high EQ evaluation and the other in a

complex answer.
A high EQ score did not surprise me. For a while now I have been making the

self conscious decision to improve my EQ. From that job I had at the gas station I

understood that if you are having an interaction with someone you better understand

where they are coming from and the mood that they are in. If someone walks into the

store with a frown on their face, huffin and puffin, the last thing they want is to have the

person checking them out for a pack of cigs and a candy bar to be bubbly. That is at

least what I would want. One of my flaws could be I injected what I would want into

situations. If I was having a bad day, I would want my social interaction at a gas station

to be the bare minimum. So when I see someone having a bad day I think they would

want what I would want in that situation.

This is where I believe the second test score is coming from. The test is from

www.ihhp.com, and they described my results as the following;

“Congratulations! Your EQ level is excellent! If you scored in this range, there is a

slight caveat however. You are either extremely high in emotional intelligence or

extremely low.”

The results go on to detail that this could be from a high or low level of self awareness.

My take away from this is that sometimes you can be so self aware that you inject your

own self into what you think people's decisions will be. I often find myself trying to

predict how I think people will interact with something based on how I would interact.

Which in hindsight can be both helpful and sometimes hurtful. If I think someone will

always react to something that way I think they will, I am not taking the time to really

understand that person because I am just assuming whatever I create in my head is

right.
The best real world experience that you can get to improve your IQ is having interactions

with people that are different from you. It could be small or massive differences but the key is to

be able to understand that there are other points of view besides yours. It did not happen out of

design, but I have been very fortunate to have a friend group where everyone comes from very

different backgrounds. I have had friends whose families do not allow cursing of any kind in

their house, and friends whose families can not say a sentence without cursing. It made me

realize that everyone’s standard of normal is completely different.

Since we all only hear one voice in our heads I can easily drift into a realm of only

thinking about yourself. While I was developing a good understanding of social intelligence at a

young age, thinking about other people before myself did not come easily or quickly. This took

time and constant reminders from those around me. Specifically being in a relationship, I would

wake up and only think about what I wanted to do, how I wanted to feel. The person I was in a

relationship with thoughts and feelings were mostly second to mine. Since this was a

relationship I was very serious about, after being confronted about being a selfish person I did

reflection and was able to come up with the solution that to better myself I need to be more

aware of the fact that I tend to put myself first in most situations.

There are very few situations in which having a low EQ would be beneficial. Everyday I

try to improve myself and the simple choice of being self aware enough to want to improve

yourself shows that your EQ level has no maximum point.

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