Hello fellow classmates, again, my name is Emily Vu Nguyen and I'm in my first year at miramar.

As most of you already know from my introduction speech, I am Psychology major minoring in

child development. With that major, I want to make a change in the world and give back to my

community, as most of us would want to do with all our majors, but with that comes hard work,

making connections, sacrifices and also trying to balance our lives and ourselves. According to

our self concept chapter from our textbook looking out / looking in 2011 by authors Adler and

Proctor, self concept means an idea of the self constructed from the beliefs one holds about

oneself and the responses of others. Mo I had always heard mixed thoughts about college giving

people an identity crisis, changing their personalities, or depression and anxiety. Personally for

me, the transition from high school to college didn’t seem as frightening as I thought it would be.

Going in my first semester all online didn’t seem to change who I was. I have always been that

kind of person who was seen as an extravert to others, but if you really knew me like my close

friends and family, I am a very self kept person, meaning I don’t just let anyone into my life. I

have built a safe circle that consists of the people who I have deemed trustworthy, loyal, and

even family. I never really been a self kept person until I hit high school. I have always opened

myself up to people that I have thought were going to be lifelong friends, but in the end,

sometimes those friendships don’t work out whether it's just losing contact, or ending on bad

terms. With past relationships I have had, whether it was friendships or with significant others, I

have learned more about myself during college than I ever did in high school. I have always had

a hard time recognizing my feelings when it comes to certain situations. With that, my anxiety

kicks in and it makes it hard to be more aware of my moods. In certain situations that boosts my

anxiety, it makes it difficult to help decipher my moods either around myself or others. It is not as

easy for me to pinpoint how I feel most of the time whether I’m sad, mad, or happy, but most of

the time, I use certain strategies to help me pinpoint them, whether it's talking to my best friend,

petting my dog and just analyzing the situation and then pinpointing how I should react. I know

with my past experiences with either people or new chapters in my life, it is really overwhelming
to take everything in and move on from high school where I had a set routine to college where

the freedom and the adulting starts. For me, understanding the difference between acting on my

feelings vs expressing myself in tough situations doesn’t come easy, but I found writing it out in

a journal or even sharing to a close friend about how I am feeling has helped me ease into

certain things. With that, it leads into how I built that into myself emotionally and into my

personality. I have always learned that there are two sides to a personality, the first side is what

people perceive you as, vs what you perceive yourself as. The personality that I perceive myself

as consists of being both an extravert/ introvert, having a calming nature, and also being into

anything spontaneous. The second personality others have perceived of me is being an

extravert, being very kind, and very social. Being perceived by those personalities depends on

how I act around certain people. Of Course around my family and friends they see how I really

am vs when I am with other people whom I’m not close with. I see myself nowadays being really

anxious around new people or even in new chapters in my life, which stems from my emotional

intelligence that I have a hard time deciphering my feelings around certain things. Coming into

college where going into in person classes is a thing again has challenged me to push myself

back out there and to express my personality and express more of my emotions in a mannered

state. I hope my story has given you all an insight to get to know me better as an individual and I

cannot wait to hear what all of you have to say as well.