Reflection Paper On Who I Am

One can be shaped positively or negatively through events that him or her has been through. While people expand their horizons to other cultural

I grew up in Pakistan with a diverse culture around me. Before moving to the U.S., the city I grew up in was a blend of people who lived there because of their jobs, education and business purposes. I learned that poverty, marginalization and violence, neither had a religion nor selects people of a specific faith to attack them. This made me devote myself to the church and its programs to serve all children of God spreading the good news of Jesus Christ and fighting for social justice against the systemic evil in the world.

Throughout my lifetime, I have had many experiences that altered me forever. The best experience that has ever happened to me was when I moved to America from Egypt. Moving to another country like America was the most life –changing experience I have ever encountered. I lived in Egypt for ten years with my parents and older brother. My family was wealthy, my mother was a lawyer, and my father was a geologist. I attended a strict Catholic school when I was in kindergarten. We had to wear a uniform every day and have it clean and ironed. Afterwards, my parents transferred me to a public school because it was closer to home. The transition into the public school was difficult because it was hard for me to make friends at that time. When we

In my first “Who I am as a Writer” paper I stated how one of the areas that I needed to improve was writing. I went into more depth talking about how my writing is not descriptive enough and how I cannot grab the reader's attention. Even though I still need to continue making improvements, I have gotten better in both of these aspects. Compared to my papers in high school my introduction paragraphs have improved.

I was born and raised in Texas where everything is Texas sized and everyone says y'all. I am an Asian American whose parents both came from Vietnam at a young age. I was soon to be molded and developed by them and my community to where I became culturally diverse. I was moved along schools which helped me build character. I also have developed into a very athletic and intelligent person due to all my friends and family helping me to reach this state.

There are many factors that shape us into who we are, and who we will become. Some of these factors we can control, while others we cannot. While we are born into many traits of our identities, much of our other behavior is learned. My identity, for example, is “based not only on responses to the question ‘Who am I?’ but also on responses to the question ‘Who am I in relation to others?’” (Allen, 2011, p. 11). My identity and the question of who I am, are both influenced by many aspects of my life, including my hometown, my family, my friends, and my beliefs and moral values.

Question #1: In your journals, please reflect on how your cultural upbringing influences who you are and the perspectives that you have on the world around you.

In Cambodia, mostly children have to start their life at school at the age of six years old; whereas, I started to be educated at the age of seven years old, in one of the public school in Cambodia. What I remember about that time is that I was so terrified to be sitting in the class. I was crying and wanted desperately going back to my house, but my parents tried to persuade me in order to stop crying and making noise in front of other classmates who sat silently and looked at me. It was so embarrassing to tell some of my stories when I was a child.

Who am I? What is the point of knowing who I am? We are all the same, right? Susie Clevenger, a poet, said that “there is only one you. Stop trying to devalue yourself by trying to be a copy of someone else” (Clevenger, 2013). This encouraged me to accept who I am, instead of looking at others around me to form my identity. On reading “Multicultural Social Work Practice: A Competency-Based Approach to Diversity and Social Justice”, I have discovered how my personal identity was formed by using the Racial/Cultural Identity Development Model and Feminist - Based Identity Model. In addition to exploring my cultural Identity, I will be discussing how prejudice impacted my life and what privileges were given to me because of my identity. Lastly, I will talk about my cultural competence and the plans that I will have in place for me to improve on it.

I am able to easily face adversity and adapt to new places due to my fast-paced, migrant lifestyle, and I find those traits to be priceless to one’s personality. I am blessed to have been where I have been and to have seen what I have seen. If I grew up in one place my entire life, I wouldn’t be the person I am today, and I would be less capable of accepting new cultures and environments. I am proud of my heritage and my background because of who it has made me into

I was born _name__ on _date__ in _place__. I am a son, brother, uncle, nephew, cousin, and friend. I was desperately shy as a small child, but grew out of it. My teen years were happy times sports, friends, summers spent in __place_. It all helped shape me into who I am today. My interests are many. I have always enjoyed reading about history and follow the history channel faithfully. I love music. It's been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I find it calming when life gets rocky.

The question “who am I”? Can have a lot of individuals thinking about themselves, including myself because one might not know where to start. It is a very broad question, but having done the Strengths Finder 2.0 assessment, I realized more in depth what kind of person I really am based on my top 5 strengths. Who I am as a learner, who I am in my career and who I am as a person of faith lead me to answering the question above and understanding more of myself within.

School, to me and among many peers of my age, is not a distant term. I have spent one-third of my life time sitting in classrooms, every week since I was seven years old. After spending this much time in school, many things and experiences that happened there have left their mark in my memory. Some are small incidences while some have had a great impact on me. However, regardless the degree of significance, things that happened all contributed to shape the person that I am now.

There are three very important aspects that play a major rule in my life. They can be categorized as intellectual, social, and spiritual. My intellectual self is interesting because I am mainly right-brained which means that I tend to use my creativity more than my mathematical skills, also making me a visual learner. My social self consists of friends, family, and my surroundings. I spend most of my time at home with my family. Whenever I am with my friends, I observe their behaviors and listen to their opinions. I am more of an independent type of person. Being with different people has influenced me into appreciating different cultures and beliefs. I have learned things that have now been incorporated into my own set of beliefs and

When I look in the mirror I know whom I am, but society makes it difficult to understand who I am, because I was born to immigrants of Nigerian descent, and I am a first generation American, that term is sometimes used so loosely. By looking at my name they assume that I am from some island, but I am so quick to tell them that “I am Nigerian”, there is another statement that normally follows this. “You do not have an accent”. I wonder if I had an accent would I be considered Nigerian and not American; then I say that “My parents are Nigerian” and then that changes, so to them I am just associated with the Nigerian culture it does not make me Nigerian, there has been many discussion between my friends who are the same like me confused to