Example Of A Reference Group Essay

“Why fit in when you can stand out?” You have been told this your whole life. But whose responsibility is it to find out where you fit in, yours? Or your peers? Your adolescent years are all about trying to not stand out, and trying just as hard to fit in with the “in crowd.” You use more energy trying to “fit in,” instead of just spending all your energy on being who you really are. A group of friends are suppose to have things in common, but that is hard when everyone is putting up a fake persona. It is the student body’s responsibility to make sure that everyone has a place they can fit in and be themselves. People spend their whole lives trying to “fit in,” while the people who “stand out” are the ones who become something. Think

I’m a fourth year varsity soccer player at an all-boys private school of less than 550 students. Despite our small enrollment, for athletics we play in the division of the largest schools, mainly ones with enrollments over 2000 students. We can argue the fairness of our placement as long as we like, but it won’t change our position. We have to accept the challenge of playing larger schools.

The groups that are formed as adolescents often determine group associations as adults and define an individual within their social group that will either set them with or against other groups. This is described in an article on social groupings by Colin Allen, which mentions that our social associations as adolescents are strong indicators to future patterns of social norms as adults. Therefore, the group of students in the movie, The Breakfast Club, can also be extrapolated to adult group dynamics. However, the varying social norms between groups can present conflicts when adults are required to function within a very diverse group of individuals. In The Breakfast Club, the Jock, Geek, Prom Queen, Delinquent, and the Freak groups are brought together initially through an autocratic or directive leadership role, used to bring the group together in order to proceed to the next phase of group development. This stage is particularly important within a group of

Have you ever walked into a class and it seems like everyone has already formed their friend groups and you are excluded? Do ever feel like you’re not a part of the crowd just because you don’t have the newest trendy shoes? Most would describe this as feeling like an outsider, and it is a very common thing. The experience of feeling like an outsider is universal because everyone is different in terms of appearance and life circumstances, new experiences are unavoidable, and society tends to alienate people if they stray from the social norm.

As I transitioned from elementary school to middle school, I have always heard about everyone trying to fit in. For me, I too have experienced trying to fit in. While others tried to fit in by buying the trendiest clothes, listening to the latest music or playing the newest games,

Media has influenced a lot of today’s trends and ideologies. Adolescents, being on the psychological level of self-identification, bring this deceptive notion of fashion and social classes to school. The problem comes when this trend affects the performance of students and their personal lives. We all remember our days back

I am Allison Zelinskas, daughter, granddaughter, cousin, Ohioan, friend, only child, athlete and more. I am unique because there is no one else like me. All the labels above make who I am as an individual. Self-concept is “The relatively stable set of perceptions each individual hold of herself or

Every public school lunch room is filled with many tables, every day these tables are the perfect place for a student to find where they “belong”. Like Beverly Daniel Tatum states in “Why Are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?”, part of the social groups forming in high schools goes to thank adolescents. Tatum writes, “As children enter adolescence, they begin to explore the question of identity, asking ‘Who am I?’ ‘Who can I be?’”(375). At this point in their life everyone begins to see their own interests and hobbies that makes them a little different than others. Because students are starting to realize their differences, in modern day high schools there are many social groups that students can identify with and feel the most comfortable being themselves.

* Our growing understanding of the belonging concept: The desire to be included is strong and the action of being excluded is humiliating:

The period of adolescence is crucial in the development of identity and social integration, and for many teens can be very trying. From the moment children begin attending programs such as daycare and elementary schooling, they are transferred from an environment that no longer exclusively contains their parents, to one where they are integrated with other children who are similar in age; also known as peers. In the United States, adolescents spend twice the amount of time within peer groups from a day to day basis than with their parents (Dijkstra & Veenstra 2011). The socialization that occurs within these peer groups plays a large role in influencing the behaviors of adolescents during this developmental period; whether reinforcing positive behaviors such as academic achievement or encouraging questionable behavior and delinquency. The importance of peer groups in contemporary society is accurately represented in the 2004 movie Mean Girls, adapted from self-help book The Queen Bee’s and Wannabees, depicting the life of a young adolescent who struggles to prove herself worthy of being accepted by the dominant social group. Whether it is deciding on identifying with the ‘Brains’ or choosing to imitate the ‘Cheerleaders’ in hopes of obtaining status, overall adolescent behavior is greatly influenced by their peer groups.

Students in High School are being pressured every day for publicity. High school is usually a place where someone can find themself, a friend group they feel comfortable in. High school students encounter many different situations that may lead them into a series of downfalls through high school. Being in this facility, students are often categorized in groups based on their personalities, what they wear, and their social connections. In The Breakfast Club there are five students categorized into stereotypical groups in high school.Those groups are the popular students, the nerds, and the emo students. Sooner than later, these five students figure they all have something in common with each other; high school, and the pressure of their parents has molded them into the people they never wanted to become. Despite the differences between the students in The Breakfast Club, they share similarities that divides them into different groups throughout high school.

When watching a movie about high schoolers, there are usually many different groups of students who all conform to one social group only. Take the movie High School Musical for example. There is specifically one scene devoted to a song about fitting in with the “status quo”. There are stereotypical

The thought of wanting to fit in to the majority affects one’s actions, identity, beliefs and values. “All Summer In a Day” by Ray Bradbury is a short story of a girl named Margot who was different from her schoolmates. Being different makes one an outcast to the majority; however, Margot’s beliefs were durable enough for her to grasp on to. Her classmates on the other hand values acceptance more than their own identity. The children’s relationship to others affects their actions, belief and values towards Margot.

The average person wants one thing more than anything else, and that thing is to belong. Without interaction human beings are known to experience aggression, depression, anxiety, and other psychological disorders, with a majority ending with murder and suicide as a side effect of not acknowledging the problem. The one group in society with the most occurrences is teenagers. Due to the fact of at that age, a person must discover who they are and what they want to be all the while having to deal with the viewpoints of others looming over them. The latest fashions, social media, among other things are all used to judge a person’s social standing, which can cause stress in some people. Even though teenagers are most often afflicted with

In this reading, Forsyth (2017) discusses the importance of belonging from an evolutionary psychological perspective and how belonging to a group relates to our sense of self, our self-esteem and our self approbation. Forsyth, examines what it means to belong to a group from the forming to the adjourning stages, and how it can positively and negatively affect our behaviour, ideas, and decision making.