My Identity

Have you ever thought about what you believe in or where your belief comes from? Your beliefs come from your family, what you see on TV or what you here on the radio, and even yourself. Your beliefs reflect who you are and what type of person you are going to be.

Now, almost a decade later I have learnt what is really important to me. It is important to step back and listen to yourself instead of looking at others. Today, with a bigger distance to my highschool years I can see what was happening to me and why I acted the way I did. I was fantasising about who I could become to be loved and acknowledged by the people around me. I thought defining myself would make me feel more secure about myself. Looking around me I can see the phenomenon of the search for identity almost everywhere.

Who I’m I? that’s the question I would always ask myself. My whole life my parents would say your Hispanic an when people ask me what are you? I would say I’m Hispanic whom my parents told me I’m.

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.

Outside influences have a strong capability to influence and alter our personal identity. Both directly and indirectly, the social contexts in which we live can change the way we think and feel, and by extension how we interact with other people and places. Immediate family, friendship groups and the physical environment are all factors which contribute to our ever changing perceptions of ourselves. Sometimes personal identity can be subtly reshaped over a gradual time frame, as our sense of who we are is modified without personal recognition that we are changing. At other times we may be able to notice our personal identity changing, through important life decisions.

Among carpenters, it is a well-known fact that building a house upon a solid foundation is imperative. When beginning the construction of a home, the foundation is always the first step leading to success, for without it, the house will become unstable. During extreme weather, such as floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and other conditions, a slight fault in the foundation of a home will most likely guarantee significant damage, if not complete destruction. Similar to a house, a person’s identity must rest upon a firm foundation; otherwise, it may not be capable of withstanding the ominous conditions of the world. When trials and burdens threaten to crumble people’s identities, their foundations must stand their ground and overcome the

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.

Unlocking the doors of the past, gives way to a deeper reflection of one's inner self. We begin our journey to find my identity and to perhaps find a better understanding of how I came to be. A heritage originating from the Caucasus Mountains to my new found origin, beginning in New Jersey. My parents migrated to NJ and brought much of their tradition and culture, which to them was a foreign land. Hard-working individuals who were always concerned about their children's well-being and happiness. The strict traditional make-up of our family home consisted of a mother and father routinely working on set hours. My mother mostly did the cooking and household chores while my father did repairs, took out the garbage and keep up with the landscaping. Once school started, English became the first language spoken in the house. Aside from the English language, a second and third language was developed through indirect exposure which is an added plus, yet in a sense decreases the writing skills, due to the lack of vocabulary words which are the creative elements which forms an eloquent style of delivery. I recall memories of the times they would sit down at the kitchen table discussing the finances of the family making sure there was money saved, for a rainy day. They were definitely law abiding citizens that took pride in their home as well as the

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.

An individual’s identity is molded by various aspects. Family, culture, personal interests, and outlaying environment all of them are factors tending to shape the personality of individuals. Personally, I tend to question myself whom I am and always think of what it takes to be a person. Out of these thoughts, I do get some of my personal identities. The most salient identity I get is my religion.

Society can not tell you who you are, or who you should be; it can only help guide you to look yourself. I had problems trying to find my place on the social scale. It had been a long time since I had to start fresh in a new environment with new people, I had always been with the same clique of people from pre-k to the eighth grade. I did not know what to do when I was placed into a public high school so before I could shut down and fall into a downward spiral I turned to the one place I once neglected; education. Education became my main objective to keep myself focused instead of worrying about being a loner and trying to make friends. The transition from a private school to a public one was not easy, but it was the learning experience I needed push me to find a self-identity and develop an appreciation for education.

If we really don’t know how to define ourselves well, then it reaches some point that we feel we don’t have a purpose in life. Finding out who we really are just takes time and thinking about our importance in life. My identity or how I define myself is something that requires elaboration. Generally, I can define myself in terms of religion, education, gender, political, beliefs, sexuality, physical or learning challenges. In terms of religion, I can say am Muslim who believes the God. My level of education is up to college level, a place where I am until today, politically, I am not affiliated to any party, but I believe in service delivery, and therefore, for me to vote in a leader for a political seat will fully depend on his / her leadership

I am thinking about every semester I have had at Brandeis so far; I feel that in every single one I earn more life lessons that I can carry with me. This semester, I have gained more empowerment in learning more about the person I am.

To understand others, one must first understand themselves. We are influenced by the ones around us and it shapes us into who we are today. We learn from one another to expand our horizons, to be knowledge and well rounded. Things like our race to our age play major roles in who we are. The three crucial things that have played a significant role in my life have been my family background, my religious views and my personal identity.

My identity crisis started when I was about 9 years old. The realization that I was different from friends, family, and my classmates were scary and hard to bare. As a young child, we are taught and framed to be a certain way, think a certain way, and live a certain way according to the family structure. Like most young girls I often fantasized about my wedding. What type of dress I was going to wear, what colors I would pick and what type of dress my wife would choose. My fantasies were often disrupted by the sound of my mother’s voice instructing me to complete a task, or letting me know she was home. At that very moment internal shame, and denial would set in. This is not normal, a wife, why was I thinking about a wife? I don’t like girls! I like Josh. That’s who I will marry, Josh.