Aabia Tahir Belgaumi - 17235

Reflection Paper

Example 1

Being the eldest daughter in a desi household automatically puts heaps of pressure on you,

leading to this immense need to fulfill your parent’s every wish. Therefore, I always tried my

best to fulfill every wish and overall, I guess anyone would say I am a good daughter but no

positive words from my parents every made me genuinely feel good about myself because I

always countered that thought with the fact that I haven’t really achieved anything in life

enough to make them proud, positive messages therefore, never really boosted my self-

esteem. I needed actions and hard-earned achievements to prove that I was actually the kind

of daughter they boasted about or every compliment, no matter how heart felt, was not just

out of love but well-deserved. It was only on instances such as when I cleared my IBA test in

the first attempt with direct admission or when I received my first pay or when I was able to

score more than 3.5 in my semester GPA that I genuinely felt like I am making my parents

proud and it was only in those moments that I sincerely believed that I was a good daughter

and therefore, felt better about myself. With that said, success does feed self-esteem.

Example 2

Given the global pandemic we are living in currently, the daily intake of information

regarding the disease has primed most of us into worrying about a list of symptoms. Priming

refers to the activation of particular associations in an individual’s memory.[ CITATION

Dav161 \l 1033 ] It is impossible to even sneeze without so much as a million thoughts about

possible covid revolving around in your head even though sneezing is a completely normal

bodily function. The priming has turned me into an incredibly paranoid person when it comes

to covid symptoms and because of that I have already gotten around 2-3 precautionary covid

tests done because every time I have any symptom, I cannot help but think it may be the virus
Aabia Tahir Belgaumi - 17235

and concern about my own health is not what worries me but that of my family members,

which is why every time I even hung out with my friends, I would keep badgering them to

wear masks and sanitize their hands. This is extremely frustrating because symptoms as basic

as a fever and cough have been associated to covid and given the changing climate in Karachi

accompanied with the dust, it is almost inevitable for everyone to go through a flu and cold at

some point and while it could be absolutely nothing, I would drive myself crazy thinking

what if? It is however, safe to say this priming is not the worst thing during this pandemic

because it is what leads most of us to be more careful regarding the SOPs, which otherwise

may not be done. In fact, there have been many studies that proved the role priming played in

increasing people’s intentions to wear a face mask to stop the virus transmission, such as that

done by Valerio Capraro and Helene Barcelo in London, UK. (Valerio Capraro, 2020) It

didn’t however, help me too much given how I just received my positive result for COVID-

19 an hour ago but it definitely delayed the process by a lot.

Bibliography
David G. Myers, J. M. (2016). Social Psychology . New York: McGraw-Hill Education.
Capraro, V., & Barcelo, H. (2020, June 16). Priming reasoning increases intentions to wear a
face covering to slow down COVID-19 transmission. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/wtcqy