3: I Want to Be a Psychology Major and Finish My Pride & Prejudice Essay

I swear; these past two assignments have made me more adventurous. Creating new screen names has really lets me explore the realms of chat rooms – a sphere that I had steered clear from. I had lacked what I felt was an anonymous identity. Needless to say, with new a new screen name, my inhibitions were lowered and I felt comfortable realizing the assignment: completing an identity switch in a psychological space (option 1).

With the copious amount of homework I had tonight, I didn’t get a chance to actually start this assignment until after midnight. When I went to check on some off-the-beaten-path chat rooms, such as NASCAR Chat, P. Diddy Chat, and Financial Safety Chat, I found not one person in any of them. So I went back to what I learned last time; people will go into Romance Chats at all hours of the night. I ventured into the Alone@Home Chat, which I was very apprehensive into going into, but it was the only chat room with people in it.

In this chat room, I decided to use my self-presentational tactics to portray myself as a 16 year old female, junior in high school. My story was as follows: I was up late trying to finish an essay on Pride and Prejudice, and I got stuck on how I should write the conclusion. I wrote a message in the chat room asking for help on writing my essay, and got a few responses.

I got into a conversation with Waterskier24. He was extremely helpful and offered a lot of help for my imaginary essay. I played up the fact that Sparknotes didn’t have enough information for me to complete my essay, and I didn’t have time to finish the book. I kept talking about the stress of the SATs and how hard my AP classes were. I made a point to focus on high school and searching for colleges. Eventually, we started talking about my fake AP Psychology class, and this helpful man happened to be an employee in a psych hospital studying sleep (hence, his late hours). I asked him what interesting classes he had taken in psychology. The conversation shifted to why I thought I wanted to be a psychology major, and how fascinating I thought his work was. The fact that he worked in a psych lab helped fuel the academic conversation.

waterskier24 (1:40:52 AM): i work in a psych hospital.... get paid to watch patients sleep most of the night

sweetipie38242 (1:40:59 AM): oo very cool

waterskier24 (1:42:56 AM): and u, what do u do?

sweetipie38242 (1:43:32 AM): im a junior in high school, so right now just college searching and AP classes

waterskier24 (1:43:49 AM): exciting

waterskier24 (1:44:01 AM): what u thinking bout majoring in, or do u not know?

waterskier24 (1:44:05 AM): where at as well?

sweetipie38242 (1:44:06 AM): well im actually think about psychology

sweetipie38242 (1:44:14 AM): and I think I’m going to apply early decision to SUNY buffalo

waterskier24 (1:44:34 AM): nice, the major for people that have no clue!

Throughout the conversation, I made a point to talk about things that I did in highschool. Even though this guy was significantly older than me, and seemingly creepy for talking to a high school girl when he was clearly beyond college age, there were no sexual undertones to our conversation, and the conversation was kept primarily to highschool academia. I made a point to make myself below the legal age when creating my identity, so that might’ve helped hinder sexual harassment, as that was a problem last week when I went into a chat room. With this barrier an my new identity, I felt comfortable “being myself”.