When I was first told that I could choose any topic I want to write my essay about, I had a lot of different ideas and strategies on how to get the best mark. Since high school, I only focused on getting good grades and never thought about what I actually like to write and what makes me happy when I write. On the train home, I started making a list on the notes app on my phone of what I like talking about and what makes me joyful. I stopped for a long period of time and I was stuck on this one simple question. However, I know for a fact that overall I am happy and grateful with everything I have in my life. It is just the question of what specifically brings me joy. Then, I realize, my “signature” according to my friends is my laugh. Thus, laughing, even though I am not sure on what specifically I am laughing at, makes me delightful.

My initial theory of writing when I first came to class was to write a topic that the teacher will like reading. I started to look up list of topics that an English teacher would like and nothing came up. I then looked up about politics since in class he would talk about politics for a long period of time. However, it was hard for me to write when the topic did not interest me. I remember attempting to write about politics on my notes, as soon as I wrote a few sentences I realize how dull and dry it was.

“What do you know about politics? Let me tell you the situations right now. In March 10 to March 24, there are 7 parties competing to be president for the democrats. They are Tulsi Gabbard, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, Michael Bloomberg, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Joe Biden. Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are the two leading competitors. The current statistic right now is thirty eight percent for Biden and thirty percent or Sanders. Why are they winning? Sanders is winning because many young American “do not feel financially secure not they feel confident about their future. He promised them that he will pay attention to justice in terms of economic and social.”

As an author, I have found that identifying and considering my audience is the most important task. I want to know not only what I need to tell them, but how I can excite them.

Perhaps when you hear your dad making a joke, you think, “here he goes again.”  He says, “Hey kid, Why did the picture go to jail? Because it was framed.”  Sometimes we laugh, sometimes we roll our eyes. Although most of these jokes are dry, they have the potential to make our daily lives light and unburdened.  Little jokes that oftentimes we consider unimportant and embarrassing are part of the little joys of life. Therefore, I want to bring something that we often consider to be unnecessary, which is “Why should we laugh?” 

From writing this introduction, I was able to relate to what I write. As human beings, we most definitely have laughed at least one in our lives. I have put being joyful as one of my priorities in life, as I have lived a dull and boring routine before and nothing excites me. A question of “what is the purpose of living?’ often crosses my mind. Therefore, when we take a step back from our daily activities to laugh, we can see how much better life can be.

Furthermore, as an English as second language (also known as ESL) student, I had trouble reading texts in English in long article. When I analyze articles, I never tried to understand what the rhetorical situation is. For the Scholastic Aptitude Test, I looked up a few videos on youtube on how to answer the reading section of the test. They highly recommend ESL students to read the questions first and only look for the sentences that relates to the questions. Therefore, when I read texts, my brain was not used to reading and analyzing the rhetorical features. Now that I am obligated to apply the rhetorical features, such as audience, genre, language, and tone, I start to understand the author’s purpose in writing the texts more. I was able to feel what the authors are feeling when they write the pieces.

Chamarro indicates how people “has not really survived the “personality war”,” meaning that we are going through altering personality in our daily lives. It is a battle in our minds about ourselves that none side has won.

Although I have read the whole passage of this article, when I do not try to understand the rhetorical situations of the article, the analysis can be sidetracked. It is also difficult to understand the deeper meaning and symbolisms that the author use through the texts.

Chamarro believes that people are constantly going through a “personality war,” where people could change characteristics as they live. He then contrasts it to the fact that “people don’t change careers very often.” This highlights the fact that a person cannot constantly change their careers, however a person is constantly changing in personality. Therefore, these quizzes might match our personalities for a week, will it match the next week?

When I slowly read and digest the purpose of the text, there is some transparency that the author is conveying indirectly that can be seen “in between the lines,” even hear the tone. This could potentially lead to another further question and more research to be done. Hence, by understanding the rhetorical features of the text, not only that we understand the one text more, it also gives new and different perspective from other sources. This is a reason why analyzing the rhetorical features is important, especially when one is trying to discover and learn deeply about a certain topic.

Through writing and analyzing articles, I was able to understand the question that I have been pondering, “Why do people write?” As writing could be enjoyable when the topic that we write about is what we actually want to dig deeper unto. In writing a piece, it should be enjoyable for both sides, the author and the audience. When the author demonstrates passion through their writing, the reader would feel more engaged to the text they are reading. The reader can “hear” the author’s tone and relate more to the author. This is also the reason why analyzing rhetorical feature is significant when reading the text. When we read the passage closely, we are able to perceive what the author was feeling as well as their thinking process in writing. When we understand the text, it could lead to more unanswered questions; which is necessary during research. Therefore, when we look closely to the passages and write it down, our ideas and hypothesis evolve and expand to greater understanding of the topic. Writing have the power to alter our perspective and digest the thoughts in our brains.

Perhaps when you hear your dad making a joke, you think, “here he goes again.”  He says, “Hey kid, Why did the picture go to jail? Because it was framed.”  Sometimes we laugh, sometimes we roll our eyes. Although most of these jokes are dry, they have the potential to make our daily lives light and unburdened.  Little jokes that oftentimes we consider unimportant and embarrassing are part of the little joys of life. Therefore, I want to bring something that we often consider to be unnecessary, which is “Why should we laugh?”  I will quote three different sources including, “Laughter Really is the Best Medicine?  In Many Ways, that’s No Joke” by Marlene Cimons has written in the genre persuasion; “The Benefits of Laughing in the Office” by Betty-Ann Heggie, an opinion piece; and a research paper “How to Laugh Away Stress” by Matt Kaplan. The rhetorical situation of these three sources illustrates how laughter can benefit different and varying aspects of our lives. The purpose of these articles is to raise awareness of how significant laughter is in our lives. The audience for these articles are people who are too busy with their daily routine and activities that they forget to take a moment to pause, breathe, enjoy the beautiful day, and laugh. Although the Cimons’ article is based on a newspaper article, it is however found in the news article website. Thus the medium for Cimons’ article is the electronic device. Likewise, the medium of both, Heggie’s and Kaplan’s paper is technology devices.

Cimons, the first author writes with an amused tone, mentioning that laugh opens up the possibility to “live many years longer than [the] doctors initially predicted.” Her stance is that laughter not only makes us joyful, but in laughter, there is also the power to heal and/or give people who are sick and weak, a higher life expectancy. Furthermore, Heggie, the author of the second article, takes on her stance that even in our busy lives where work is piling up, we have to still remember to be joyful. To further develop this idea, Kaplan the third author maintains a the matter of fact tone. He explained the results of an experiment, which showed the correlation between our blood pressure and our happiness. Kaplan’s stance on this research is that laughter is the best medicine. He demonstrates how the chemicals in our brain change as we are placed in different situations.

Cimons begins her article by stressing that laughter must be our daily priority as she mentions that she is inspired by the 97-year-old Carl Reiner “who wake[s] up and tickle[s] [him]self while [he is} still in bed.” She explains how laughter and happiness tend to prolong human life. Cimons even used it in the title of her article. Knowing that she will discuss laughter, he wrote, “that’s no joke.” This is used to catch people’s attention, illustrating that even though it is not tangible and cannot be seen, real laughter has the ability to yield the same results as those that we would get from medicine. Cimons continues this discussion with an animated image of an hourglass where the sand path is covered by a large smiley face emoji. This hourglass represents the time that we have in this world that will eventually run out. The smiley face that stops the sand from running smoothly symbolizes the idea that when we laugh and our lives are filled with happiness, we indirectly extend our life span to “delay” the time of death. With intrigued tones, Cimons quoted Reiner who said, “When you can laugh, life is worth living… It keeps me young.” This further underscores his stance that life is beautiful when filled with happiness. Reiner also pointed out that with a joke in his days, he felt that laughter filled his life. Then, Cimons writes about how Reiner, with his 93-year-old friend Mel Brooks, both still smile widely and are healthy, demonstrating the impact of prioritizing happiness in our daily lives.

After showing the effects of laughter on our health, Cimons argues that with laughter, human beings improve socialization and interaction and consequently raise our life expectancy. To increase Cimons’ credibility as an author, he quoted Professor Sven Syebak, from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, who has 50 years of experience explaining how joking acts like “absorbers in a car” parallel “a mental shock absorber in everyday life.” The language that Cimons utilizes is parallelism, which illustrates how laughter helps alleviate the pressure of the things that burden our hearts, just as the frustration and irritation in us do not equate to the joy. This does not necessarily mean that we end up forgetting our hardships and difficulties, but at least with a joke and joy in our hearts, the burden feels lighter. Cimons then shifts her ideas to talk about how when we radiate happiness, people would be more likely to want to hang out with us. To support this idea, she also quoted Edward Creagan, a Mayo Clinic Professor of College of Medicine and Science, “Nobody wants to be around negative, whiny people. It’s a drain.” People are more “attracted to funny people,” because as human beings, we are always looking for happiness in our social lives. The reason why this is so, is because when we smile or laugh often, we also instill that happiness into the people around us. Our laughter is contagious.

Cimons’ final argument depicts how laughter improves our memories. This is implemented through “Clown Therapy” in the elders’ residence, where a clown comes in to joke, play music, and tell stories in an effort to improve memory and responsiveness. Cimons further supports this argument with evidence of “Clown Therapy” given to an old man in a hospital with Alzheimer’s disease. The clown’s interaction with this patient helped him to be more self-aware and remember his days as a youth. This demonstrates that the funny and unique presence of a clown brings a source of happiness to these elders, which leads to the maintenance of their memories. Cimons found it interesting how the red nose used by a clown, leads to the patient jogging back to the memory lane. Cimons then uses a metaphor bridge where the red nose connects the person’s memory to his past. Seeing the red nose can “collect the memory and then bring it to the present.”

Likewise, Heggie argues that in our daily work that tends to consume us, we must remember to laugh. When we choose to laugh while doing work, the workload will seem lighter to carry. Just like Cimons, Heggie also begins her article with an image of a horse on the beach laughing broadly and happily. Horses are symbols of hard working animals that are described as workers who work in a steady rhythmic environment and life. With this image, Heggie implies that horses have the same, repetitive routine every day.  However, with an image of a horse laughing, Heggie stresses how workers can choose to be happy in their workplace. Moreover, Heggie continued this article with an embarrassing anecdote of when she laughed loudly and obnoxiously at a serious meeting with her boss in which “they turned and stared at me.”  She uses this story to build connections with readers of her article, because many people can relate to this situation.  On the other hand, people may also be ashamed to express themselves because of their fear of this shameful thing happening to them.  But after she makes the reader conscious of her loud burst of laughter, Heggie develops her argument of the importance of laughing at the appropriate time.  She stated, “our office had needed a good dose of laughter,” describing how these workers needed some joy to ease up their energy-draining and repetitive tasks. Heggie believes that her jokes are “something people look forward to each day,” as many forget the importance of laughter and to lighten up the atmosphere. It is because of the gloomy situation at workplaces, people tend to look for the light, the sense of happiness to ease the heavy burdens and difficulties in their work. In addition, within her article, she quotes research conducted by two well-known schools. She states that according to Wharton, “every chuckle or guffaw brings with it a host of business benefits.”  She then follows this with a quotation from Professor Alison Wood Brooks, Harvard Business School, who said, “Cracking jokes at work can make people seem more competent.”  Heggie put these two quotations one after the other to develop the idea that a small joke if applied in a business situation can have a positive impact on the business.  This is ironic because jokes in the workplace are deemed as not taking the job seriously.  But the reality is that, through one or two jokes on the job, workplace dynamic is increased, and workers are motivated to work even harder. 

After revealing the idea that when there is happiness at work, the business will run smoother, Heggie goes on to explain the effects of laughter in our bodies.  Because the Mayo Clinic is a well-known source and is guaranteed that the explanation is accurate, similar to Cimons, Heggie also cites the results of research conducted by this site.  The clinic explains that by “laughing heartily,” it not only “lightens your load,” but also increases “brain’s release of endorphins.”  Endorphins are useful for increasing the level of human relaxation as well as decreasing symptoms of stress.  Heggie then continues with employing a language device, juxtaposition, “a rollicking laugh fires up and then cools down your stress response.” Through this, Heggie portrays how with a passionate laugh, our mentality responses by reducing our stress and heavy burden.  After showing the effects of laughter on everyone, Heggie shifts to illustrating to the bosses how radiating a positive environment to the business will have positive impacts on the workplace and his employees. Heggie analyzes the Key Performance Indicator (KPI), pointing out that the KPI effect is that with the joy in the work atmosphere, the rates of staff absenteeism decrease. This also leads to another aspect of the KPI is the rate of productivity, as when the environment is not stressful, the employees tend to be more involved in the workplace.  Heggie quotes from research about a worker, working with a light heart, they become 10% more productive. She incorporated this statistic to show the company bosses that the presence of happiness in work, not only does it benefit workers, but also the business as a whole.  Therefore, happiness and freedom in the work environment must be implemented so that the business is more advanced.

To further clarify the arguments of the Cimons and Heggies’ article, Kaplan explained the relationship between happiness and level of stress.  Similarly, Kaplan also supports with research to explain how the phrase that is commonly used, “laughter is the best medicine,” is true. Kaplan discusses the research from 2006, conducted by Berk about happiness begins to arise before we laugh. When participants were told to watch humorous videos for 30 minutes, their “adrenaline was down [by] 35%” this drastic percentage is used by Kaplan to show that when we are happy, our stress levels will automatically go down too.  And to further emphasize this, Kaplan stated the fact that even with only the anticipation of undergoing a happy experience, their stress levels are already lowered. This explains Cimons’ and Heggies’ discussions about the relationship between happiness and stress levels, where there is a negative linear relationship, meaning that when our happiness level is increased, consequently our stress level is decreased.  By citing Berk’s article, “It’s No Joke, We Need to Start Prescribing Humor as Medication,” Kaplan implemented an inclusive language to elaborate on how the results of this research is a great discovery that hospitals should begin to instill joy in their patients as medicine. Often, the things that most people do not consider important, like laughter, is something that is needed by them to help with their mental health.

Laughter must be one of the priorities in our lives. To emphasize the importance of laughing Cimons concludes his article by quoting a joke that Reiners said, “Keep laughing … You’ll live forever.”  With exaggeration he said, if we live full of joy, then our lives will be longer than our life expectancies. On the other hand, Heggie closed the article by giving the suggestion “Let your laugh free. Not all day, everyday of course,” explaining that we should not stop ourselves from laughing daily, because we are afraid and ashamed, but, we also have to know the situation and timing, and know when and where we can laugh freely. While Cimons makes a joke about the longevity of life when we laugh often, and Heggie concludes her piece by insinuating herself and giving the readers advice, Kaplan writes about what the next steps are in this research. Therefore, readers can become curious about what effects will arise in our bodies when we laugh. A day spent without laughing is a day wasted. Here is another attempt, if you did not laugh at the first one “What did the big chimney says to the small chimney? You are too little to smoke.”

Reference

Cimons, Marlene. (2019, June 15). Laughter Really is the Best Medicine?  In Many Ways, that’s No Joke. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/laughter-really-is-the-best-medicine-in-many-ways-thats-no-joke/2019/06/14/9f159208-8955-11e9-98c1-e945ae5db8fb_story.html

Heggie, Betty-Ann. (2018, November 16). The Benefits of Laughing in the Office. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2018/11/the-benefits-of-laughing-in-the-office

Kaplan, Matt. (2008, April 7). How to Laugh Away Stress. Retrieved from https://www-nature-com.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/articles/news.2008.741

“Everyone Has a High School Musical Character That Matched Their Personality – Just Choose Your Favorite Foods To Find Yours” I got Ryan Evans, apparently I am “fun, caring, and underrated.”. I am sure most people who have access to the internet have heard of these types of quizzes and answer them, as I am guilty of doing so as well. Although there are no correlations between the High School Musical characters and the type of food I eat, yet I am still appealed to answer these questions. People who are still lost in self-identification are often easily convinced by the world telling them what or who they are. They need justifications and words of affirmation in order to understand their purpose and who they are meant to be. They even seek the ways of how they are meant to live in this world that is full of societal expectations. This is why people believe in astrology, tarots, Chinese horoscope, to tell them what to expect in the future. Why do people believe in fortune tellers? Because most people still do not have a firm understanding of who they are and what their purpose is in the world. They forget that they are the only person who can tell themselves what they like, other people cannot arrange their future for them. Most people are too occupied in trying to survive that they lose their identity. 

When you ask a little kid, “What do you want to be?” Even though the answer sometimes is beyond possible, yet oftentimes they do have something to say. On the other hand, when you ask a high school or college student the same question, “What do you want to be?” Half of them would answer “I am still trying to figure it out.” This is not a bad or wrong answer. However, this demonstrates how as the children are becoming adolescents, they start to understand the reality of the world and have become clueless on who they want to be and how their life can have an effect on the world. They develop a sense of self, the need to discover their identity. This understanding have been observed and explained by a psychologist named Erik Erikson. Erikson explained how there are eight psychological stages in growing. The fifth stage is “identity vs role-confusion.” This stage happens when the person is in their adolescence. In this stage, a lot of changes are happening to their surroundings, such as puberty and societal expectations. If they succeed in their social life, hang out with the right group and know what is important to them, the person will be able to understand what kind of a person they are. However, if the surroundings do not support, often they get confuse on their own identity. They still struggle to answer the “Who am I?” questions. 

People strive to understand who they are and what they are meant to do in their lives in order to use their lives to the maximum of their capabilities and to make an impact to their world or even as small as their community. This is the main reason why people do personality tests. People are able to confirm and verbalize their traits and qualities through these personality tests. Director of the Media Psychology Center, Pamela Rutledge says “they are always curious to get a bit of insight as to what they’re really like.” She explains how people are eager to understand themselves as individuals and how they are similar or different than their surroundings.

Why are people invested in the personality test? According to the author of an article entitled “What Personality Tests Can (and Can’t) Tell You About Yourself,” Virginia Sole-Smith’s stance on this article is that people are comforted in the validation of a label. In an out-going tone, her purpose in writing this article is to explain why people like filling up questionnaires, developed into an algorithm that could tell us how we would react under some circumstances. Sole-Smith utilizes statistical evidence of how “Google tracks an average of more than 400,000 searches each month for “personality tests”.” This highlights the idea of how people nowadays are legitimately interested in learning about themselves. They believe that this tests would lead to self-discovery. The genre is tabloid article. The audience of this article is people who questions how well personality tests describe a person’s characteristics. These personality assessments are developed in the 1950s, when corporations introduced the idea that a quiz or a test could tell us something about ourselves that we have and have not yet to discover.  Why are we fascinated by these quizzes or tests? Due to the comfort of labels. These labels validate our personality in the simplest form in the hope to reassure us of who we think we are.

The effect that personality tests give in our social life is the main reason people are intrigued by the test. According to Jennifer V. Fayard is the author of the article “Why Do We Like Personality Tests, Even the Bad Ones?” She concludes that by character tests we are grouped into different personalities and we can feel as though we belong to a community. In a matter of fact tone, Fayard’s purpose on writing this article is to explain why even though the personality type is wrong, people are reluctant to acknowledge it. Her stance on this matter is that personality tests are not a good indicator of who we are, however we still believe that the results are true. The genre of this article is encyclopedia article. The audience targeted by Fayard is people who are overly obsessed to personality tests and base their personality on the tests. Fayard believes that the reason we are intrigued by this personality test is because “we want to belong.” This explains the reason as to why personality test is a part of a person’s identity. As Erikson says, in order to know our identities and avoid role confusion, we have figure out where we belong. She then develops this idea by saying how “feeling understood and normal is a powerful experience.” This highlights the importance of feeling “there were others out there like me.” Also, how we are as social beings crave to be a part of a community, to be included. This idea leads to how in order to be a part of community, we need to understand other people. Fayard believes that by these personality tests, we are able to comprehend why a person is acting a certain way. Therefore, Fayard elaborates on how even though we realize that there is a certain personality that do not match with who we are, we refuse to recognize the mistake. As we want to be included in that group of personality type, regardless of how bad the personality test is.

Buzzfeed quizzes are known to be ridiculously weird and impossible. As their questions mostly have no connection to the result. Why do we do these questions? “Choose Your Favorite TV Shows To Determine Which Movie Theater Snack You Are.” According to Josh Haynam, the author of the “What makes BuzzFeed Quizzes So Popular?” It is because “they’re short, seemingly interactive, chockful of pictures.” In an engaging tone, Haynam writes this article for the purpose of showing how buzzfeed quizzes catch the audience attention and why we want to answer those questions. His stance on this article is that the fun of BuzzFeed quizzes is part of the marketing scheme. The genre is tabloid article. The medium of this article is electronic devices. His target audience are people who are intrigued with buzzfeed quizzes. Haynam utilizes statistical evidence of how Facebook feed is sixty-six percent “BuzzFeed Quiz Results,” this stresses the fact that people are interested in learning about themselves. He also exposes the fact these BuzzFeed quizzes fall into the same category as the well-known personality tests, however the results are more positive. In mentioning this, he believes that people needs validation of the positive traits that they have. The content that “makes them look good.”

The second part of humans identity is the career path they choose to pursue. This is explained by the author of “The Psychology of Career Choices: Why Personality Matters,” Thomas Chamorro-Premuzic. Chamorro-Premuzic’s stance in writing is to explain how career choice cannot be listed through the personality test. The genre of this piece is informational article. The targeted audience is to people who are in contemplation of their career choices and start doing these personality tests to choose. The media of this article is technology. He wrote this research in a neutral tone with a purpose to demonstrate how personality does not correspond to career. There are certain features that could apply and indicate how a person would suit a job, however it is not possible to say that an extraverted-feelers would be a good manager. He believes that people are constantly going through a “personality war,” where people could change characteristics as they live. He then contrasts it to the fact that “people don’t change careers very often.” This highlights the fact that a person cannot constantly change their careers, however a person is constantly changing in personality. Therefore, these quizzes might match our personalities for a week, will it match the next week?

Long-terms employment companies are implementing pre-screening personality test to whether their future employee would be a good fit for the company or not. As an interview is not enough to know how a person would react under pressure. In a formal tone, Ken Sundheim, the author of the article “Do Personality Tests Lead to Better Hiring Decisions?” with a purpose to illustrate the effect of having a personality test for the company. The stance of this article is that certain even though the tests are “not perfect,” it is beneficial for the companies. The target audience of this article is to future employees who question the purpose of the pre-screening tests. The medium for this piece is electronic device. Sundheim initially mentions the limitations of the test as the future employees could “fake the answers.” However, he believes that the benefits outweighs the limitation of this pre-screening tests.  He then shifts his idea to listing the benefits of how the pre-screening tests when it succeed. Sundheim mentions how these personality tests “tend to be the most accurate” way of knowing whether a person is suitable for the job position. The indicator to whether a person would match with the other employees and the working environment. 

The most widely known psychological test is the MBTI test, abbreviated from Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Just as how they abbreviate their test name, their personality test result are also abbreviations of four different words. This personality test divides our personality or characteristics into four different categories, which results in sixteen different personalities combination. These four categories are mind, energy, nature, and tactics. The mind determines how we interact with our environment, either you are an extraverted of introverted. The energy shows where we direct our mental energy, either to intuitive or observant. The nature determines how we make decisions and cope with emotions, either by thinking or feeling. Lastly, the tactics reflect on our approach to work, planning, and decision-making, either by judging or prospecting. 

According to Ronald E Riggio, the author of an article entitled “The Truth About Myers-Briggs Types,” MBTI test is a useful tool for self-reflection and understanding the differences in individuals. In an informative tone, the purpose of Riggio’s article is to explain how even though this personality test can be good for understanding oneself, this tests enforce people to be divided into two different categories. There is no middle ground for this personality test. The audience for his article is for people who are interested to know or learn more about the MBTI personality test and its accuracy. Through the medium of technology devices, Riggio writes an article in which his stance on his article is that there is a problem with the psychometric associated with the MBTI. Riggio disagrees to the idea of career should not be based on the personality tests. Riggio believes that companies that use the MBTI to select employees is “an obvious misuse,” as there is no evidence to prove that the test would support hiring processes. Hence, Riggio acknowledges that the MBTI can be positively use as a reflection of personality and a reason to tolerate one’s surroundings, however he exposes how the personality test is often misused. 

I personally have done this MBTI personality test and I am an ISTJ type. They explain how in friendship I do not lightly give away myself to someone and would end up building a smaller circle. Interestingly, when I took another personality test they say I do not find it easy to get close to new acquaintances and I have limited and selected network. This two different test similarly explain how I build a relationship with others. However because of this test, I accentuate this personality type and become more selective towards the new people I want to get to know more. I would start ignoring people who I assume I would not connect with and one-by-one looking at each individual judging their personality. This exemplifies to what Riggio explains about how the MBTI is often misused by people. Because MBTI is not exactly defining who we are and how we are supposed to react, the test is a “best-fit” type. Therefore, I might only be fifty one percent of the selective friend type and forty nine percent opened to any types of friendship. This is Riggio believes how the MBTI test are often misused by people, as you are “given the same score” as a person who is a hundred percent judgmental in terms of friendship.

Furthermore, Riggio’s idea is reinforced into detail by Angus Chen, the author of the article “How Accurate Are Personality Test?” The rhetorical situation in this article is how the personality test that are known as reliable is debatable. In an assertive tone, Chen’s stance on the issue is that this personality test is “bogus stuff”  as it gives false information. The purpose of this article is to explain why people who do these personality tests should not be used as guidance on our actions to the world. The audience of this article is directly emphasized on people who allows their negative behavior as an excuse because their personality type says so. Chen quotes a personality researcher from University of California, Davis saying, “Until we test them scientifically we can’t tell the difference between that and pseudoscience like astrology.”(Simine Vazire) This explains how researchers have not yet found the difference between the personality test that is known as a reliable and accurate source and the astrology, where people believe the stars shape on the sky when you were born is able to determine who you are. 

Chen believes the inaccuracy of this reliable personality test is because of how questionnaire is the worst way to test someone, however through the questions we are able to reflect on ourselves. Often the wordings of the questions are “shockingly bad” as it is poorly worded. There was a question on the personality test I did “ Do you agree or disagree, you cannot imagine yourself dedicating your life to the study of something that you cannot see, touch, or experience.” This demonstrates how the personality test can be vague and hard to understand what the psychologist meant. Filling this one question randomly could be the one question that determines whether you are an intuitive or sensing person. Leading us to believe that we are this one type, even though we answered the question wrong. He then shifts his idea to   quoting the personality researcher mentioning how “you won’t learn anything that you didn’t already know about yourself” and “personality tests can only tell you what you tell it.” This displays we need this questionnaire to identify ourselves, more than the result of the test. As the result only summaries the response of our answers, which also depends on how truthful we are in answering those questions.

In conclusion, these personality tests can be a good indicator of the traits and characteristics that we should improve and try to be better on. However, we should not base our lives on these personality test. Let’s try another BuzzFeed quiz, “Make A Delicious Pizza And We’ll Accurately Guess Your Age” It says I am 40+. 

References

Sole-Smith, Virginia (2015) What Personality Tests Can (and Can’t) Tell You About Yourself

https://www.realsimple.com/work-life/life-strategies/what-personality-tests-tell-you-about-yourself

The Everygirl (2017) We Need To Talk | Why We’re Obsessed with Personality Tests

Fayard, Jennifer (2019) Why Do We Like Personality Tests, Even the Bad Ones?

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/people-are-strange/201909/why-do-we-personality-tests-even-the-bad-ones

Haynam, Josh (2015) What Makes Buzzfeed Quizzes So Popular?

https://www.business2community.com/social-media/makes-buzzfeed-quizzes-popular-01335537

Premuzic, Tomas Chamorro (2011) The Psychology of Career Choices: Why Personality Matters

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mr-personality/201106/the-psychology-career-choices-why-personality-matters

Sundheim, Ken (2017) Do Personality Tests Lead to Better Hiring Decisions?

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/294897

Riggio, Ronald (2014) The Truth About Myer-Briggs Types

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https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-accurate-are-personality-tests/

The commonly known phrase “laughing is the best medicine” has been used by the public for decades for numerous reasons. It is mainly used to encourage people to live life a little more and enjoy the present by laughing. This phrase is not a phrase that is just made to lift up the energy of people, it has actually been scientifically proven that laughing does heal diseases. Not necessarily healing the entire sickness, however, it does elongate the life expectancy. Through my genre I would like to emphasize how laughter is contagious. Through our laughter and simply expressing the joy in our hearts, we could encourage our surroundings to also laugh together with us.

The first genre that I would like to explore is calligraphy. Nowadays, I have seen a lot of young people post their handwritten quotes with great photography skills and edit. Generally, their posts have color schemes that matches their aesthetics. Other than the aesthetics of beautiful handwritings and great photography skills, calligraphy has a greater purpose. Calligraphy aims to communicate feelings that the artist believes need to be shared to their viewers. This is done in hope that the viewers will have a new perspective of what is written. In my calligraphy, I wrote a quote saying, “There will always be a reason to choose joy.” This is the point I was trying to get across the young generations nowadays who are overwhelmed by the busyness in their lives. All of the homework and deadlines might cause them to forget what the real purpose of living is. It is understandable that all of these works that they have to do are necessary in order to survive in this weary land. However, once they have become successful and is able to survive without much pressure put unto them in order to strive, what are they living for now? They look for joy and happiness, as having money and successful careers do not necessarily mean that one will be happy. The perspective that I am trying to raise awareness is that, joyful hearts can be found in every step that we take. It depends on how we look at the matters and affairs in our lives. Instead of waiting until one is successful to be happy, why not start right now? Along the way of becoming successful, as happiness is a choice made by every individual. This is the reason of why I wrote the words, “always” and “choose joy” in bigger font and in cursive. These words highlight how one always have the choice to think positively or negatively in their daily lives. It is only logical to choose to be positive and be joyful. Also, as some people are quickly scrolling through their feeds and only read the highlighted words. When only the words in cursive are read it will form a sentence “always choose joy.” This is the most important message that I am attempting to get across the viewer’s minds. Furthermore, I drew a sunflower around the calligraphy as a border. Sunflowers is the most vibrant flower. The vibrant yellow color symbolizes freshness, optimism, and happiness. Therefore, sunflowers are known as flower to bring joy as they are “happy” flowers.

The second genre that I would like to make is a simple video that demonstrates how laughter spreads. This video was inspired by the video of the spread of the coronavirus of how one person can spread the virus quickly to their surroundings. This inspired me of how laughter is also contagious and how we can spread the joy to our surroundings. The target audience of this short clip is businessmen or businesswomen as videos are used a lot in their arguments when presenting an idea. Hence, I believe that showing them visually of how they can have impact on other would be better comprehended. The first emoji that pops out in the video is a representation of us being the start of joyful surroundings. As they, themselves have to be happy to bring other people to the more positive side. After the first person is joyful, more emoji pops out around the person is illustrating how we can bring our community to brighter days. The community that we are in can influenced how we feel, such as if one hangs out with people who are sad and discouraged, they would feel their sadness and be sad as well. Instead of being influenced by the community, we should influence the community to be happier. When they see the delight in our hearts, they are more likely to follow the positive spirit that we project. Right now, as technology advances, distance does not seem to matter as much. People can gather through texts and video calls with their old family members or friends from another state or country. That is why after the whole community is cheerful, the spread is starting to move to another continent. Because, being joyful can transfer through anything. Only by calling loved ones, we could be happier and so are they in the other side of the world. After they are happy, they can start influence other people in their community to be happier with them. This is the reason why I increase the speed when more people are starting to become happier. The popping sound effect whenever a laughing emoji pops out is to indicate how quickly the spread are getting as more people are influenced. I also incorporated a caption that say “make the world shine brighter with your laughter” to tell the audience of how just by them being happy, they can have an effect towards a lot of other people, not only their close ones. As their close ones also have another group that are close to them. This caption emphasized on the fact that they can be the source of joy to many other people. As the world becomes full with smiley faces, the last thing I put in the video is filling the whole earth with one big laughing emoji with shining effect around it. The one big laughing emoji covering the earth symbolizes how people on earth should be covered with euphoria. Also, demonstrates how one person can bring the whole earth to a more positive side. The shining effect is the portrayal of the word “brighter” in the caption. Bright is a term used to explain when someone is cheerful and simply happy. Thus, the word “brighter” in the caption means that we could bring other people to a more positive side in terms of feelings, enforcing our principality of being happy to others.

In conclusion, these two compositions are attempts to bring joy to people in the world. The first genre is a calligraphy to reach the younger generation to adolescents. As calligraphy is used a lot by young people nowadays due to the calligraphy being aesthetically pleasing to their eyes. I am using this genre to remind them that being happy should be incorporated in their daily lives. The second genre is a short clip, targeting people who are working in the office. A short clip is an easier way to convey what the presenter wants to tell their audience. To be easily understood by adults, I believe video is a way of reminding them on how the feelings that they are projecting can have effect on others and their surroundings. That is why they should always be joyful so that their happiness can be seen and can influence to others.