McCandless Project
by Ana Sibberson
For the McCandless project I decided to not talk for the whole school day. For someone like me who is very talkative this would be hard. I also though that this experiment would have a big reaction. So on Monday I got to school where I met up with my friends in the cafeteria. My friends noticed immediately that I wasn't talking. It was really funny to see people reactions. Through this experiment I realized how much I actually talk. I would see a friend and with the first minute they would notice me not talking. Many people thought that I had lost my throat or that I was in a bet with someone. Funny enough only one person the whole day guessed that I was not speaking for the McCandless project. The experiment actually was really hard to do. One of the most frustrating things that people would say was, “Tell me why you're not talking.” I found it very frustrating because people where asking me to talk when I couldn’t. For me personally I was not shocked by people reactions. They reacted as I assumed, thought I would have thought more people would have guessed that it was part of the McCandless project. My reaction to not talking for the day was different then I assumed. I thought it would have been easy, however I was sadly mistaken. For me this was awful, I’m such a talkative person that I had to spend all of my energy trying not to talk. I was surprised to realize that people expected me to talk and that it was considered the norm. It was odd that while yes I was able and still am able to act however I want, people do judge and find it abnormal when you do something uncharacteristic. However while we are able to break away from the norm, we are not able to do it freely without having other judge us.
