chapter 6

When we are in our private life, we usually don't really care about anything. We usually could voice our opinions however it is that we want. With public life, however, we tend to be more careful. We tend to choose the most appropriate way to do something. That doesn't necessarily mean that we have multiple personalities, it simply means that we know the "norm" and by so, we know how to behave in front of the public. We shouldn't use the public space as a platform to voice our "common sense." We should have these boundaries that shouldn't be crossed between public life and private life. "Private life, unlike public life, eschew difference, finding definition in commonality of interests and commitments."

I really could relate to this chapter especially because I'm an international student. I'm from Indonesia and then I went to Seattle to study before I transferred here, to Minnesota just this semester. I have this "Indonesian life," "Seattle life," and "Minnesota life." The people in it are all different people from very different background. There was this one time when I was doing a group project with my classmates here, in Minnesota when my friend from Indonesia called me. She was having this problem so I couldn't hang up on her. So I kept on listening to her and talking in Indonesian. After reading this chapter, I realized that I was invading my private life to my public life. I can't help but think about how uncomfortable it was for my classmates to listened to me talking with my friend while we were together. I didn't realize that I was kind of combining them two because I didn't really think about it. Now that I think about it, I tried to make my public life a place for my private life by doing the thing that I did. I realize that I should have set some boundaries between my private life and public life in order for things to go smoothly.