Shaping My Identity

Me and Ally’s friendship has always been like a roller coaster. There are some ups and downs, but it is always full of excitement and rushes. I’ll never regret meeting her because she made me the person I am today. She’s taught me how to get out of my shell more and be myself, and most importantly she has taught me what having a proper best friend is supposed to be like. To be able to talk to them without any judgement or criticism while also being able to have the best time of your life. Meeting her was the best decision I had ever made, and I will never regret

One day in 6th grade I met my hero and best friend. She saved me by many things that day, but this was the most caring one. We were walking around a round the gym and talking, when we walked into a boy I had problems with. We lashed out at each other saying stuff like "you stink!" , "stop being and arse!", etc. She tried to get me to stop arguing eventually I did, after him and his minions stomped away.

Today I am talking about how my best friend and I met. My best friend’s name is Sydney Rott. The story of how we met is a cliché but I am going to explain it anyway. We didn't know each other up until my Sophomore year and her Junior year. I decided I wanted to go out for the tennis team, even though I have never really played before, I still decided to join. Sydney was the number one player for the Harrisburg Tennis Team. I thought that she was a brat when I first met her, but as time went on I started to like her.

Have you ever had a person in your life you never thought you could be friends with, but you ended up being best friends? Picking a point in my life that I know impacted my life in just one choice was easy. For me, Joining Cannon Falls Weightlifting team, was not only very enjoyable, but it gave me the opportunity to become friends with my now two best friends. So many questions to how in just ten months we went from strangers to best friends.

My community has played a huge role in shaping my identity. My mother, being a doctor, always taught me to be caring and loving towards others. The children and teachers around me have all been hard working and determined. Throughout my school years, I have persevered, not giving up on hard math problems or getting discouraged by people who were smarter than me or more athletic. The multiple food drives and fundraisers has taught me to help those in need and be nice towards others.

In the midst of my tears at the beginning of that car ride in August, my mom said, “you’re going to make friends. You’re going to form deeper friendships than you have ever known to last a lifetime.”

society and what is expected of us in line with our gender, class and culture?

Personal identity is essential in the human experience. Identity is complex and can be broken down into two main groups: introspective identity, and bodily identity. Introspective identity is based off of the groups, mentalities, or beliefs that you align yourself with, and bodily identity is based off of the physical side of yourself. Whether physical or introspective, your identity impacts every action you take. Whether choices ranging from what colors you prefer to which college you want to attend are primarily based off of your introspective identity, which is a combination of both memory and consciousness, physical identity impacts how others perceive you. Consciousness is mainly the awareness of bodily identity as well as continuous introspective identify, while memory is awareness of introspective identity. These two different facets of identity are imperative in the distinction between bodily identity and introspective identity. In means of personal identity introspective identity (which is evident in memory), is essential, while bodily identity (based partially in consciousness) has less credit.

It was the first week of summer, after graduating high school. Most of my friends were gone away to college or had jobs. Parents working and older siblings have moved away. It was the beginning of adulthood. I owned nothing to my name, I had no job, no car or any motivation. The only useful thing I had was a friend. Nancy, she has been in my life since we first met in middle school. How we became friends, she gave me two dollars. Those two dollars made our friendship. Just like Esperanza gives up her three dollars for a bike and some friends, Nancy did the same. She willingly gave up her lunch money, so I wouldn't starve at school. Since that day we became best friends. We had the same struggle and we almost have everything in common, and we

Through his nurturing friendship, I gained an outlook on life which changed my life. Having dealt with many problems

Meeting Mackayla changed me because I didn’t have very secure friends and they were never there for me then on the first day of school in seventh grade I met Mackayla in first hour P.E.

The first time we met, I didn’t realize that the seemingly meathead jock with the deep rumbling voice would teach me how to be me and swim in the oceans of life. In putting my trust in him, I gained an inveterate friend who has always been there to pick me up when I fell and knows exactly how to right my path. When we met, I was abashed by life and petrified to be me; he was self-assured, impeccable in every aspect of life. He has saved me more times than could possibly be counted; everyone should be so lucky as to have a friend like him.

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

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.

When I was in kindergarten, I met my best friend. She was very shy at first and nothing about her seemed malicious. However, as the years went by, she became very imperious and unwilling to share anything, including friends. She wouldn’t allow me to befriend any other people without putting up a fight. However, she was allowed all the friends she pleased. Over the years she began to push everyone apart so that she was the common area between a bunch of enemies. Eventually, she and I began to argue over petty things and she would always make me feel as if I did something wrong. A massive argument then arose and I began to lose hope for our friendship because even though she was using me, I was oblivious at the time. The fight did separate us, and I was quite somber about the situation. However, this was when I realized all the things she had been doing wrong; all the things that I was better off without. The ending of our friendship for this period of time allowed me to reach this epiphany that I was my own person able to have my own friends, able to make my own decisions, able to be happy about my accomplishments. This sudden realization lifted the doleful weight from my shoulders, allowing me to become a much happier person with a new outlook on my life. Like I stated before, sometimes it takes us until we reach our lowest point to realize the journey that awaits, to regain the hope and strength that was lost