Dialogical self

In this entry, I am gonna talk about an article that is about a young boy, whose name is Zach, age 17, who 'came out' as being gay when he was 14 years old. It is describing his struggle thru primary school, when he didn't want to admit to himself that he is gay. His parents were and still are supporting him one hundred percent and when he came out, his life turned upside down. He had problems with his schoolmates and neighbors his age, because they were teasing him all the time and calling him by insulting nicknames. But when he started high school, his life became better, he got a lot new friends, he is now participating in singing and drama groups, and he also won the middle school's top vocal award. He said his social life sky-rocked in sophomore year.

In the beginning of an article, there is an obvious struggle between identities in a young boys mind. He didn’t want to admit to himself that he’s gay, because that was not what society was searching for. All boys from his class were talking about girls, and which one do they like, but he didn’t feel that way. He couldn’t say which one he likes. From desperation, he invited one girl to a school dance event, just so others would think that he likes girls too. He didn’t allow himself to be what he wants to be. He just wanted to fit in a society. He was coping with two different voices in himself, and he wanted to shut one down. Because of that, he was angry, unhappy and had really low self-esteem.  Like Herman and Dimaggio are saying in their article about Self, Identity and Globalization, personal voices of individuals or the collective voices of groups enter the self –space and form positions that agree or disagree with or unite or oppose each other. In this case, voices formed positions that opposed each other. That’s what this young boy was fighting with. He had two different identities in himself, and he wanted one of them to disappear, but that was not possible, because this identity was too strong. Because of that, he was bad at school, depressed, fighting with parents, etc. ‘Within us are contradictory identities, pulling in different directions, so that our identifications are continually being shifted about. ‘(Hall 1992: p. 277)

He had two different voices in conflict. He wanted to be a ‘normal’ boy, but he knew something doesn’t allow him to be like others. He tried to push the voice, which was telling him, he is gay, down. His parents asked him, if he is gay, before he even knew by himself that he is. And he didn’t want to hear anything about it. But, when he decided to let the other voice come on the surface, the process of forming and developing an identity started.  Reffering to Hermans and Dimaggio, dialogical voices can be reasoned and emotional. They can argue, negotiate, convince, and shout, accuse, beg, laugh and cry, express anger, joy, sympathy love, fear… These are just a few ways in which people relate to their environment and to themselves. At first,  Zach was coping with strong emotions of fear, anger and sadness. His parents helped him in best possible way, in my opinion. They found him a gay therapist, who found Zach a gay youth group, so he had people like him around himself. They helped him to start building his own ‘bonding’ social capital. This concept is formed by Putnam and it means that Zach started to ‘bond’ with people who have similar interest as him, belong to a same group as him, they share same values, mainly, they are very similar to each other. Bonding social capital results from in-group trust and is very important in difficult emotional situations. When an individual knows, that there is someone else, who is going thru a very similar challenge in life as he/she is,  person starts feeling better about himself and about solving the problem, because she/he knows he is not left alone with it. It is important just to talk to somebody, it doesn’t have to be a solution right away. Bonding social capital makes people stronger and more optimistic about themselves and their future. And that is why Zach felt much better about himself after he joined gay youth group. He also let his other voice to be free and speak for itself. He started to feel good in his body, his self-esteem raised and most important, he found a way to communicate with his dialogical self. He let the voice about him being gay, become stronger and help him to evolve his personality. That reduced his previous experience of uncertainty about himself and the world around him.

I think this article is a very good example of how to help young people, who are struggling with evolving their own identities. It is very important, that parents are supporting their children with being what they want to be. Adolescents need a support of their parents more then they realize. Second most important thing is, helping a child to create his own social capital, and a net of friends, with which he is comfortable with. Otherwise he won’t be able to develop his personality in a way he would want to. All of this is very crucial in my profession, because I think we’re going to deal with lots of cases like this, and we should know how to approach them, so we can help them the best way we can. Without prejudice and discrimination, we have to find a way to help youngsters develop themselves in a way that is suitable for them and not only for society. 

Tetterode Amsterdam - Metelkova city Ljubljana

We visited an occupied house few weeks ago, where one of our schoolmates lives. At first I didn’t really know what to expect, because I wasn’t familiar with the concept of squatters and occupied buildings, but now after this great trip true the whole building with our own tour guide, I am much more educated about it. 

When I was on my way back home for a weekend, I was reading a flight magazine during the flight, and there was an article about a very known area in the capital of Slovenia, where a lot of art, music, culture and theater shows are shown. It is called Metelkova mesto(city). I actually didn’t know this is an occupied place, until I read the article. I’ve been there already and it is very artistic, maybe already a bit weird for no-artist people. It is designed in the other way then Tetterode in Amsterdam. There are no people living, like in Tetterode. And it is much smaller, it doesn’t have any real shops, factories or offices. It is more dedicated to artists, who have their studios there. Metelkova is also very popular with young people who belong to different alternative subcultures like punk, rave, metal, hip hop, hippie… It is also known as a place where a lot of people are using drugs, such as young people who are going on a party and having predrinks there and regular drug users. I was there only a few times when I was in my first year of high school, and since then I only walked pass it. I was never a really big fan of it, but if you see it in daytime first, I think it is much more interesting. It has a different concept then Tetterode in Amsterdam, but it is still very useful for different kinds of artists and other culture activities.

Metelkova city

I was very fascinated by Tetterode, because I really didn’t imagine this house to be so multifunctional. It has many apartments, art studios, metal factory, small shoe factory, night club, social work office  and everything in one building. One of my schoolmates lives there, so we also had a chance to see one of the apartments from the inside and it was great. Rent is very low for Amsterdam, but they also have some down sides because of it, such as bad isolation – as the person who also lives there told us. People in the building feel like they are one big family, because they all know each other and most of them live there for many years already. Some of them are there since the beginning. There are more places like Tetterode in Amsterdam, and I am glad we had a chance to visit this one, because now I know better what the concept of squatted house is and how life is taking place there. 

6 girls, 5 countries

I live with German, English, Belgian and two Danish girls. So there are 5 different nationalities in our flat.  On one side, we have very similar cultures, but on the other side, we are all different from each other. I will give just everyday examples. A difference between English people and all of us who live in that flat is that they don’t wash the soap off the dishes when they wash them. At first I thought my flat mate forgot to do that, but now I know that’s how they wash dishes. I also noticed we have different types of meals over the day. I usually cook something for lunch, and for breakfast and dinner I eat something similar to a snack (sandwich, fruit, vegetables etc.). Danish and English people always cook a big meal in the evening, for dinner. And their lunch is more like my dinner. I found it interesting how me and my flat mate from Germany are making coffee for ourselves. We often drink coffee together, and not long ago I noticed that we make coffee the opposite way of each other. I put coffee in the cup first, then boiled water, and then milk. She first puts milk in the cup, then boiled water, and at the end coffee. And one thing, that was quite weird for me is, that people I got to know here, always put a salad on the same plate as main meal. When I had lunch with my Estonian and German friends, we cooked pasta and salad for the side meal. They all put a salad from the big bowl, and put it on their plates with pasta on it. So I asked If I can eat a salad from a big bowl, because we all do that in my country. And they thought I am joking or something, because they don’t do that at all. It is weird for them to eat a salad from one bowl. I always do that with my family or if me and my friends have a lunch together at someone’s home. So I felt like a cave men, because one girl said, that they did that in their country maybe 100 years ago. I mean, come on! We are not that behind! I just don’t like mixing food on my plate. Main meal is main, and salad is a side meal. So at least extra small bowl for a salad would be nice.   

We had a ‘family dinner’ with my flat mates, and as I already said, we are from Slovenia, Germany, Belgium, England and Denmark, so it would be interesting if we would have some kind of euro dinner, local food from our countries. But no, we chose to cook Mexican food. So if you want to try non-european food, and meet european girls, our flat is the right place to come. 

Bike Adventures

I got a bike! Well, actually I already have it for 14 days now, but it is still exciting. I bought it at Waterlooplein market, that’s an outside market place in the city centre where you can find anything you want - clothes, shoes, jewelry, souvenirs, food, bikes, bike chains, lockers,… Bike is one of the most important things you have to buy, if you live in Amsterdam. I knew that before I even came here. So now I have my own bike and I already feel more Dutch. Of course I am still a bit clumsy on my bike, because it is an old one with pedal breaks, and I’m used to drive my ‘mountain’ type bike with hand brakes. Well, actually I am not used to drive bike at all anymore, because since I have my motorbike and a car at home, I stopped driving my bike. And it would be really hard for me to go to school or to the city center with bike in my country, because we have a lot of hills everywhere. I am already sweating here, when I come from my place to the city, because I’m living in Diemen (7km from the city center), but in Slovenia, I think I would need a shower and fresh clothes if I would go to school with a bike. It's also quite a distance from my home to school here in Amsterdam, but hey, at the end of semester, i will have awesome sporty legs because i bike at least 15km a day. And that's why it's worth it. :D It has also good and bad side when we're leaving a party in the city, and some of us have to drive 20 minutes to come home. Usually, we are all very tired of course, so just a thought on biking so far is exhausting, but on the other hand, everytime me and my flatmates cycle back from the party together, we have an awesome funny story to tell the other day :) 

I love colourful stuff, so I had to paint my bike. Now it's even cooler! 

I saw that Dutch people don’t actually consider traffic lights important. So, I thought I don’t have to do that either. It turned out, that was a bad idea, because I don’t really know the system here, and I almost got killed two times, when I wanted to be brave like Dutch people on bikes. So from now on, I think I’m going to stop when a light is red, and start when a light is green. Oh and what about the chaos on the bike road! Almost everyone is in a hurry, and god help the pedestrians on the bike road. These are probably tourists, and everyone hates them. I think I am starting to feel annoyed by them too. Because it is true, if you are in a hurry, and there is a group of tourists on the bike road, they are all occupied with their cameras, and all the sightseeing, so they don’t even see you coming. That’s why, we have to stop our perfectly good journey to work/school/meeting, whatever, and avoid the group of tourists. But still, everything is so exciting for me now, that I am not really angry at them, because I kind of feel like one myself. I still stop and take pictures of nice places, or just from some typical Amsterdam houses, canals and stuff. My friends here are making fun of me, that I am still such a tourist. But why not? I think I can be local and tourist at once. Local on the bike, and tourist in the free time J  

First impression

I arrived in Amsterdam in the middle of August, to get to know the city a little better, before my exchange programme starts and to  participate in the Introduction week of ISN. In this week I met so many students from all over the world I couldn’t even follow anymore. They were from all over Europe, USA, Australia, Asia,… I’ve never met so many different people from so many different countries before. It’s actually quite impossible to do that in Slovenia, because it’s not very known country, so not a lot of foreign students go to visit it or go study there.

I noticed quite quickly that Amsterdam is much more diverse in all aspects, than Slovenia, or if I compare it to Ljubljana, the capital. We don’t have as much cultures on one place as here in Amsterdam. But I think this would be great for Slovenian people, because most of them are really controversial and getting to know more cultures and people from different ethnic background would help them see, that there is a lot of nice people outside of Slovenia too. More and more young people decide to study or work abroad, so at least we can share our experiences and maybe try to change opinion of controversial Slovenians.

A big difference between Dutch and Slovenian people is also in communication. Dutch guys are so straight forward that I was really surprised for the first few times, when they just said whatever they wanted to. We are usually not like that. A joke made up from Slovenian people is that Slovenian national sport is gossip. But that’s actually true. I mean, we also have a lot of very good sportsman on a lot of different fields of sport, so don’t think that’s all we can do. But it is true, that Slovenians just don’t say everything they want to. They just keep it to yourself and then talk about that with a friend. And that’s very bad. I like honesty of Dutch people, and I’m getting used to it. Oh, and another thing that shocked me was, that Dutch men don’t buy drinks to girls.. I found out about that on introduction week, when we were talking with our Dutch coach and people from my group and he said: ‘Why would you do that? Why would you buy a drink for a girl?’ And of course the reaction of ALL of us was: ‘woow, what!?’ We are from all over Europe, USA, Asia, and Australia and for all of us it’s normal, that a guy comes to you in the club or if you’re on a date he offers you a drink and of course also pays for it. But not Dutch guys. If you go on a date with a Dutch guy, you pay for your own drink and he pays for his own drink. That’s how it goes here. And don’t expect that a Dutch guy will come to you in the club and offer you a drink. You’re now in Netherland, so you pay for your own drink, or find a guy who is not Dutch if you want a free drink. ;) 

from the back: Turkish, Slovenian, American, Australian and Dutch guy's head . :)