Cycle of Socialization and Student Identity
My Identities
Student- I think being a student is an important part of who I am because I always love to learn and expand my knowledge. I’m a very curious person so being a student helps me channel my curiosity, and because you never stop learning.
African-American- This identity is something people will always identify me as without knowing my background. Yes, I consider myself African-American but I also have other cultural aspects to me that attribute to who I am. I’ve always been interested in knowing who I am as an African-American and my ancestral history. I also have to be aware that I will have to overcome discrimination because of my skin color.
I believe and have faith in God- Faith in God is something I knew about but never studied for myself. Recently, now that I’m in my second semester of college I have decided to study God’s word. My faith in God is important to me because God has made me who I am for a purpose.
Female- Being a female is important in defining who I am because it makes up a lot of the characteristics I have. Such as how I think, my emotional being, and how my body differs from a male. Also it’s important for me to understand as a women society will treat me different from a man.
Roommate- When it comes to sleeping, showering, or cleaning my dorm that is when my identity becomes a roommate. I must no longer think about myself only but be considerate of others. Being a roommate is my least enjoyable identity but it is important to me because I have learned so much about myself and others.
Mentor/Advocator for higher education- This is an important identity for me because it is something I am passionate about. I am a mentor for Leaders in Education Awareness Program, this program allows me to reach out to k-8 students who may have social justice issues, come from low-income household, and the first to go to college. This identity is not an everyday identity but when I have the chance to educate a young student I will.
Cycle of Socialization and Student Identity
The Beginning: As a young child I had limited information on what a student was, but beginning home schooled at a young age I didn’t think of home as school compared to my other siblings. I did the action need as a student to please my mother but didn’t exactly know what a student was.
First Socialization- When I went to public school my first public school teacher doubted me. I didn’t obtain information like I was supposed to in elementary. I knew I was an intelligent individual but still thought lowly of myself. I thought as myself as an okay student who had many faults and learned differently than everyone else. When my mother went back to school in her mid-30s and when I was in high school, she got her BS in Biology to become a biology teacher. That is when I really started learning about being a student and college. I would go to my mother’s school to go to her lectures and her professor’s office hours. It was a great moment in my life, I was proud of my mother and I was able to bond with her professors. My mother made me begin to think that a student and college was a norm. My mother shapes a student as a positive identity for me.
Institutional/Cultural Socialization and Enforcement- When watching Disney channel and teen movies I always admired the person who was the nerd. The nerd was most of the time themselves, that is what I liked about the nerd. I knew that school wasn’t not how all media portrayed it to be. Social life was not what school was all about. Also the media had a lot of minorities who had dead in jobs and wanted to go to college a lot later after high school. That shaped me to not want to be that person who started a dead end job after high school. I took Honors and AP classes which many of the white students or lighter students who were in these classes were going to college, but many of my minority friends and classmates were going to two years or working.
I had realized that some of the students who didn’t go on to college or a four year didn’t have the support I got from both of my parent.
Result/Action (direction for change) – I felt guilty that my close friends didn’t get to experience college life like I did and the many other generation of students who would need to be educated about higher education. It resulted in me helping other students who didn’t have the support system that I had or resources. I took my action when I came to college to be a part of Leaders in Education Awareness Program so that young students could have the knowledge to be a successful student pursuing higher education.
