My Personal Identity

Every year I look back on the previous and I see how much I have changed. I see the friends I have gained and lost. The heartbreak and the happiness. Despite how rough times have gotten, it has truly made me stronger. Everything has shaped who I am today, it has shaped my identity. Identity is a complex topic because it consists of changeable and unchangeable traits and outside internal influences; my own identity has been shaped by going from private to public school, young life camp, and my current friends.

Can you be religious in today's society without being stereotyped? Can you bring up your beliefs in an everyday conversation without being ridiculed? The answer to that is simple, no. In today's society, people are strongly opinionated. Certain individuals believe religion is a filthy word. Should you avoid talking to those types of people about your religion? Should you change what you believe to appease others?

My social identity plays a huge part in shaping and defining my role as a leader. The way I view myself combined with the way that others view me frames the narrative of my opportunities to be a leader in many ways. Of my various social identity characteristics, the two that play the largest part in my life are my gender and appearance as a woman and my economic standing as lower middle class.

I am truly proud of my background and how it has formed my identity. My background consists of me being Portuguese. I could not be any more thankful for how greatly my background has impacted my life into what it is now. It has helped me gain many friends that I am still very close to and gain interests that have started since I was a child. Simply experiencing my family’s numerous customs and traditions is why I love to express that I am Portuguese. It has given me the opportunity to visit Portugal every year during each summer where I fall in love with the country each time. Being Portuguese has taught me many lessons throughout life that I will continue to pass on for future generations of my family.

My purpose is to show my individuality and to express myself. This is for others including myself, to see and to remind us that our identity is very complex.

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 didn’t come from a particularly religious, or irreligious, household. Growing up, there was no solid, undoubting spiritual framework from which I could base my life on. There was never any Sunday morning “rush-hour,” where we would all eat a quick breakfast of bacon & eggs before cramming into the car to go listen to a man, clad in white, preach & sing to us about a creator. There was never any youth-group, or summer-camp, or bible study. Not to any fault of my parents, of course - I just wasn’t raised that way. That being said, I was still told about God, the bible, and the things that entail it. Despite the fact that I was never really, fully indoctrinated into the Christian faith, I was still being raised as a Christian, and that’s what I identified as for the majority of my childhood. I was Austin Tanner Herz, the 3rd grader, the lego-fanatic, the comic-book reading, lunchable eating, bed-jumping extraordinaire, the Christian. Little did I know how much my religious identity would change over the upcoming years.

PROMPT: “Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.”

Identity defines the fact of being who and what the person or thing is. It helps a person to distinguish or identify their characteristics and personality such as language, school, traditions, and culture. Normally, it is the assumption of a certain person that he or she use to do and believe. The purpose in discussing about identities may increase other people’s knowledge about who and what you are. It is a way to expressed and advocate people the things they misinterpret about your character and personality.

Sunday mornings my mother in the kitchen singing in Spanish cooking breakfast for everyone afterward we would head to church, a Latino congregation. My parents would be talking in Spanish, I would always understand what they were saying when they would talk with me speaking English or Spanish interchangeably back to them. It never occurred to me that other kids’ parents do not speak another language because I was so used to both. As I grew up I was always called the gringa (white girl) of the family. From neighbors to classmates, co-workers, and people I interacted with in general did not think I was Latina because I have fair skin and naturally blonde hair but light brown eyes, my brother, and, father have green eyes and blonde hair too. It never really bothered me until I realized later as I grew up and started to navigate the world more on my own that I saw it as an issue. Being confronted by people who challenge me on my own identity has given me another identity in which I must defend and prove that the labels I put on myself are mine and I do not need to meet your requirements for you to accept that I am who I say I am.

Being held to such high expectations by one's family can put a lot of pressure on an individual. For several years, both my parents and grandparents have worked immensely, to get their future children in the place that I am now: in a place with satisfactory education and opportunities. I hope that in the future with these opportunities, I will be able to be the first to go to college, and build my own career. My Mexican cultural background is very special to me, in the way that causes me to see things in a different perspective than others. It also empowers me because with it, comes many stereotypes and proving them wrong is something I am determined to do. I am still at a young age where I am still trying to figure my future out, and in order to do this, I must be able to figure out my identity and purpose. I am nothing but grateful that my family has been able to give me the opportunities and unique culture, because with this, I will be able to break many barriers within my family.

Growing up, I was always the quiet and introverted child who had trouble in communicating with others. Basically, all of my friendships, from pre-school to senior year, were created from the other person taking the initiative to talk to me. My first friend, Alyssa, took on the responsibility of communicating to others for me when we were younger since she was much more outspoken. But starting this year in a completely new school, in an unfamiliar state, without having any friends or family was a whole new ball game. When applying to California schools, I only focused on being close to resources that would assist my future career in film editing. The idea of being all by myself did not really hit me until I was arranging my stash of instant noodles in the Pentland dorms. Anxious and lonesome, I knew that college would be terrible if I continued to stay solitary. I could not spend all of my meals in my dorm, streaming the latest uploads on Netflix. Therefore, I joined the Nikkei Student Union.

am a student, with a meaningful background and identity. If I did not explain and share my story you would not understand who I am as a person, a student, an athlete, a friend, sibling, or a daughter. Just like any other student I have qualified for many titles, but my titles are affected by my identity and background. I am a student diagnosed with a severe mental illness.

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 .

Religion, education, being made in God’s image, circumstances of birth, freedom, fear, and care for others form my identity and the identities of those in the Old Testament. I, like the patriarchs, identify myself by these standards and uphold them even during a challenge because these markers establish who I am as a person and the fundamental principle of my being. By staying true to these markers, I represent my passions while not breaking under the pressure of society.