Is your SL avatar a projection of yourself?

I am currently reading Peter Bradwell's The Edgeless University, there is a lot of information in it and I'll write a review when I finish it. But today I was reading a sub-section entitled: Learning in an immaterial world, the opening sentence starts:
"Second Life, an immersive virtual world in which people control avatars (digital projections of themselves)..."

I wonder if people using Second Life actually see their avatar as a projection as themselves or something else. I've noticed that people new to Second Life describe what they did in a session, while as more experienced people talk about what their avatar did, so I think projection maynot be quite the right word.