James Sullivan
IAH 209
Professor Norman
June 16, 2014
Performing Yourself in Everyday Life Every single day, we as people play a role in society and put on performances for everyone around us. However, these behaviors don’t make up the essence of our individual identity. I will prove this using the experience I’ve had playing baseball, all through my youth, high school, and also my college career. Within a baseball team, or any team for that matter, you have your leaders, your star or important players, you have role players, and you have the guys who don’t play very much, but sit on the bench and work hard and cheer you on. These roles are either laid out by the coaches or by the players themselves. When I was in high school, I began as a role player as a freshman, and became a full-time starter as a sophomore, however I wasn’t a leader. I was named a captain my junior and senior seasons, becoming one of the big leaders on the team. My social performance within this team changed from year to year. The first year, I would lay back in the shadows, but by my junior and senior seasons, I had to play the role of a leader and will my team to win and be successful. This happens outside of a team environment as well. When I moved on to college ball, I went right back to being a role player and someone who works hard in practice but isn’t a big part on game day. I realized my role right when I came to my first practice. The older guys who had been there for three or four years ran the show, and all of us freshman followed suit and did our jobs. If you didn’t follow your role within the team, there was almost always a conflict or someone was butting heads. When there’s a conflict within the team and when someone doesn’t understand their role within a team, usually the players had to resolve this conflict. If that wasn’t going to be possible, the coaches would have to meet with the players, and define these roles. As a leader on my high school team, if someone didn’t understand their role, I would pull them aside and make sure they knew exactly what their job was, and that was my job as a leader on the team. What defines a successful social performance within a baseball team is simple, does it translate to good team chemistry within the players, is the team having a good time and working hard, and are they ultimately winning games. Good social performance means performing your role on the team to the best of your abilities. Last season, our team struggled at times because people weren’t performing to the best of their abilities. We had players who were supposed to be producing and were slacking in that area, we had leaders who weren’t leading like they could, and we had players on the bench who weren’t supporting the team. All of this lead to an all around poor performance. The common goal for all roles within a team is winning games. Your social performance also depends on how you want your teammates to view you. You want your teammates and coaches to look at you in a positive way and think you’re contributing any way you can. This leads to good team chemistry. This applies to any social setting as well. At work, you want people to look at you in a positive way, not in a negative way. These behaviors I showed within my teams do not, however, reflect my identity wholly. I perform differently depending on the setting I’m within. My role on my high school baseball team is a completely different role than what I’m performing at work or within my family. I was a leader on my high school baseball team, but I’m not a leader in the work place (I work in the athletic department here at Michigan State – just some background information). I’m just not qualified like the people who work above me.