Developing Personal Identity

When reflecting on my personal development as an undergraduate college student at Chapman University, themes that consistently resonated with me were growth, change, achievement, challenges, and aspiration. Additionally, it was important to examine how the range of expectations I had for myself when entering college specifically affected the importance of meaning making when associated with my travel abroad experiences and when I developed new friendships. As I emerged towards adulthood during college, factors of being personally responsible, open to exploring life, and confident in making independent decisions were consistent areas that I was striving to achieve while in college. Also, the search for meaning in my life grew to influence how I came to know myself and continued to learn to understand and connect with others. When thinking about the theories discussed in the EDUC 664 course, Arnett’s theory of emerging adulthood is intertwined throughout my personal undergraduate development. Consequently, Chickering’s seven vectors of

It was not until this year that I began to get a sense of who I was as an individual. Instead of forming my own identity, I relied on the standards of those around me to define myself. Although I as a person am still pursuing my ideal character, I now realize that my identity is not what others make of me, but of what I make of myself.

There is no doubt that the culture I have experienced in my short 16 years has had an influence on the development of my personal identity. I tend to think of myself as a very cultured person, which is surprising if you take a look at where I come from. Most of the culture I have experienced, like the fine arts and a wide variety of music, is derived from my own curiosity and my relationships with my family and not stimulated by my community. Because of this factor, the person I am today is almost the complete opposite of what my community is.

Identities are largely derived from the roles individuals play within society. When I think about my identity as an individual I predominantly think about external factors such as my gender or skin colour. For me, being largely a part of the dominant culture within Australia, I found it increasingly difficult to reflect on what has made me the person I am today.

Personal identity is an ambiguous concept that plays an essential role in the story of your life. Have you ever thought of who you are or what makes you up? Some believe that it is your body, mind, or even that your “self” does not exist. Identity can be defined as all of those things and an infinite amount of others. Self is made of your soul because your body and mind are physical and they deteriorate over time and your soul does not, you are yourself despite birth and death, even if your ideas and opinions change over time.

Everybody chooses whether to be yourself or copy someone successful. Being oneself is more important because you make your own identity and because you build courage.

When people want to figure out their identity, they’ll have to change their perspective, on how they think people view them. Doing this, you’ll slowly engage deeper into self-consciousness. George Herbert Mead, explained in four stages on, how people come to self-consciousness. Two important things that work together as a person goes through the stages, in George Herbert Mead’s theory are, the “I,” and the “Me.” The Four stages are, imitation, play, games, and generalized (Pg. 35-40 Mead 2009.) There’re also some challenges, and another theory that relates to, George H. Mead’s theory of identity development, that I will discuss as well.

There has been experiences throughout my life that have shaped my life and personally shaped me into the person that I am today. From being exposed to these experiences, I have gained personal values, self-identity and different aspects of my life. These aspects of my identity include my gender, ability-status, social class and language. Having these influences showed me how different I am compared to another person who has the other characteristics like myself.

The problem of identity is a very challenging subject. It is quite difficult for us to wrap our minds around the question “Who am I?” One constantly changes. Values and morals change as time passes on. Does that make one a different person?

“Pay no mind to what other people say; whatever makes an individual happy is what he or she should do.” This quote comes from my grandmother, who tries her best to teach me about an individual’s personal identity. An individual’s identity represents who he or she truly is; it is something that allows a specific person to stand out from the crowd. During an individual’s life, he or she will come across many obstacles that will shape her or his being and will further shape her or him into someone with particular traits, or an identity. During my life, I grew up with six older siblings who each had voices and opinions quite different than mine. Although I felt different from everyone else, there was always one person who I related to, my

Everybody has an identity, it makes them individual and unique, and it defines who you are as a person. This project about my identity showed me what makes me unique. I would have never known how much my friends mean to me or how my identities connect with each other. I have three identities that make me who I am, cultural, personal, and social. A specific quality that covers my cultural identity is being Czechoslovakian. Both sides of my family have at least a part of Czech in them. My great-grandparents are from Czech Republic and my grandpa was the first generation in America, he was born in Ohio. This is very important because I have always identified as Czech and it is a big part of me, as I am so interested in ancestry. For my personal identity, the biggest part is my personality, being loud and outgoing, has always been important to me. The reason being, it is how people view me. A lot of people know me as the loud person or the person who talks a lot. That is meaningful to me considering I like people to view me in a certain way The last identity, social, is one of the most important to me because it involves my friends, and through this project, I learned how vital they really are to my social identity. I realized that I have a good amount of friends in this project. It is nice to have people as a support system and to relate with. These qualities show that I value being loud and outgoing. It also says that I value my family and they are a big part of life. The last one, social, ties in with the first one because it shows I am outgoing and friendly.

I grew up in an average middle-class family, where I attend a public primary school during the early years of my life. Primary school was rather simple reason been most of the pupils were friendly and there was so social division both inside and outside of class. However, once I entered high school life became different with the existence of classes due to boundaries between the well-behaved students who were also classified as middle class and the students who were rude and involve themselves in truancy was considered middle class. During this time, my personality and emotional developments were developing and with the emotional support from my parents my self-identity was enhanced. Which in turn gave me the foundation to become the person I am now. Emotional and Personality development can have a positive outcome on behaviors, learning and the decision that are made in schools this then can lead to a stronger self-identity.

To say the least, the struggles in finding my identity is similar to those of Thomas. Thomas struggles a lot between being who is family wants him to me and being who the hip hop culture wants him to be. These two identities shaped most of the decisions that he made in his early life, leading up to and in college. Transitioning into Georgetown, Thomas was experiencing conflicts in which his actions did not match how he was raised at home. Thomas is having to make the decision on whether or not he wants to put on the face for his peers at Georgetown, or his hip-hop community. This is similar to how I felt with my family, after transitioning into a boarding school my sophomore year of high school. I had to put on a different face for my family, after coming out to and growing around my supportive peers at school. I felt that I had to live up to a certain standard at home, which is how Thomas also felt when he began studying at Georgetown.

They may even only take pictures of a precise part of them that they believe looks the best. Many of them also make faces that they think make them look more flattering. These girls’ ultimate goals are to make people think they look a certain way that matches what society says they should look like. I have also experienced girls taking pictures with certain lighting that makes their eyes pop or their hair look different. The other day, as I was walking down the sidewalk, I saw two girls taking a picture together. They snapped one and then said no I do not like that and went somewhere else where the light was better. So many people focus on making themselves look the way society thinks is good and go to great links to do so. On my own

On my identity collage the things that I put are the ones that are very important to me and the ones that I embrace in my life . Some of the things that are most important on my collage is my culture , religion , family and a little bit of my future . So let’s start off talking about my culture , my culture is deprived of two parts Indian and Fijian . Our culture has a lot do with dignity and respect for ourselves in the world , we are taught moral values that we are supposed to follow through our whole lives . Also the values that we are taught in our culture we are also encouraged to let others know as well as instill these values into our kids for their better future . Some of the values that we are taught is to not eat beef or pork as beef comes from cows and Hindus worship cows as mothers and pork is not to be eaten as it is considered an unhealthy meat and against one of the Hindu gods . So I have learned these values from my culture and this is what we are taught .