Thanks to the COM352 students for contributing a bunch of new pages! I'll be moving these pages into the main area of the wiki soon.

From UMassWiki

There is a widespread and very human desire to discover an identity. It seems impossible to live life without having a home base, the self, which makes some kind of sense or holds some kind of structure or meaning. This becomes even more apparent when a person must interact with others. Often, those who have not found an identity for themselves get picked on because they become ‘followers’ or ‘poseurs.’ That is, they take on the identities of people they admire (or even people they despise! This is not voluntary, though). This is different from learning from people one admires, for that will affect one’s identity but does not become a regiment. However, even though most people do not find themselves trying to become someone else, most people do find their identities in question. It is easy to think that you want to be a certain person, and then find that certain aspects of your life or self seem to work against those aspirings. In light of this common issue, I have found comfort in my own take on identity formation. I am confident about my identity, and feel that it is solid and strong, but at the same time, my identity is dynamic.

During the last unit of my high school English class we read a short novel by Herman Hesse called Siddhartha. It, of course, was a version of the Buddhist story of Siddhartha (many changes were made, but the message remains). Siddhartha’s life begins in his father’s house. As a Brahmin his father conducts ceremonies and rituals, teaching them to his son as he grows up. As Siddhartha goes through puberty and adolescence, he becomes more and more dissatisfied by his father’s belief system and accompanied practices, so he decides to run away with a friend. The next phase of his life is a journey of vastly differing circumstances. First they stay with a people called the Samanas who deny themselves all pleasure and devote themselves to fasting and meditation. Next, they discover a man named Gotama who is the Buddha. Siddhartha’s friend, Govinda, falls in love with the doctrine of the Buddha, but Siddhartha has a gut feeling to abandon the practices of others. Third, without his friend, Siddhartha finds a city and becomes both a successful merchant and a lover to the resident princess. Even this, however, cannot satisfy him, so he once again abandons his lifestyle to find a new one and wanders into the woods. After this point is when he finds his “true” identity, but his experiences up to that point are just as important. Throughout his life, Siddhartha becomes part of one subculture, and then ditches it for the next option. Each time he finds issues with the supposed doctrine of the subculture – he finds that they may be empowering or enlightening, yet he still cannot perfectly place his finger upon his own soul. It is not until he abandons everything but the environment itself and his own mind that he can find peace within himself. I can directly relate to Siddhartha’s failure to benefit from a specialized group of people who proffer specific truths and lifestyles.

Until approximately the middle of high school, I had trouble with society in general. I did not adapt overnight, rather followed a gradual learning curve. Toward the end of elementary school I had slowly become what may be referred to as an ‘outcast.’ Basically I was really nerdy and weird. During this period, which lasted until seventh grade, I generally only had one friend at a time. We would hang out every day we could, and that was often, just because we were such losers. There were points where I hung out with a group of kids but I was almost always felt a bit misplaced. However the friendship with the one person was still a friendship, perhaps enhanced by the fact that we could share our distance from the “in” crowd. With the coming of middle school, things began to change. Although I still didn’t hang out with many people, I started at least talking to them more in school. Along side this came the fact that I was made fun of more often, but I was never awfully depressed about my social situation (and likewise beforehand). Unfortunately, while I wasn’t depressed and did share some great memories with choice friends, I still felt like I was missing out on a large portion of the collective of the school.

Seventh grade brought about a significant change when I met my longtime friend Justin. He and I had very similar personalities, but he was part of a group of friends and also had more involvement in extracurricular activities, adding to his acquaintances. This was the first time I belonged to a group since before the third grade. Along with the fact that I was going through puberty at the time, my identity was forming quite a bit more than before. Now I was often hanging out with at least two other people. Because Justin lived in a very self-contained neighborhood, I started to meet other kids in the same area and soon my friends were beyond the range of ‘nerd.’ We related on the common ground of Squire’s Glenn (that’s the neighborhood). It was a place that you could just show up to and find people to hang out with, and everyone’s gravity caused large groups to form on the street where Justin and a few other friends lived. These groups were rather varied, with a mix of nerds and skaters (and girls). You could say we all liked to chill outside, we all liked to horse around, we all liked to set things on fire, and so on, but we were somewhat mismatched.

Because of the experience of Squire’s Glenn, as I went through high school I began making new friends on my own. This is when I began to ‘specialize’ – I would associate with people of similar interests, such as playing music or acting to name a couple. All of this relates back to Siddhartha’s movement through society. In the very early years, everyone was friends with everyone else, but then in the second half of elementary school I became disconnected. I went from associating with one or possibly two people for long periods of time, to associating with the kids in and around Squire’s Glenn, and finally to associating with smaller groups of my own finding. I can’t say I was totally dissatisfied to be anything short of Mr. Popular, just as Siddhartha could find good aspects of various philosophies, but there was a progression through different stages which led me to a similar conclusion as Siddhartha. I stated earlier that my identity is dynamic. What this means is that I have come to realize that identity is constantly changing. Every person I meet, every new thing I try, every place I go, every meal I eat, every sentence I read, every song I hear, every cloud, tree, breeze, star, building, animal, and plant I come into contact with is part of my identity. There is no thing that has no effect on a person – however small it may be, it exists. So I cannot simply say that I am a hippie, or a guitarist, or a nerd, or an outcast, or Mr. Popular. All of these things are part of my identity and they are more apparent at different times. In the recent weeks of college, I have not met a great deal of people and spend a good deal of time alone. You could say I am a kind of outcast right now – but my social skills are still all there. It’s just that I can adapt to whatever situation I find myself in. Similarly, Siddhartha could not say he was a Brahmin, or a Samana, or a Buddhist, or a merchant. I believe one of the reasons that I’m so confident about my identity (“Identity Achieved”) is because I don’t try to constrain myself to any regiment, rather know that I’m a collection of experiences and reactions culminating to a general outlook which is constantly under revision.

The collection of clothing I have is nothing short of eclectic, mostly due to the fact that my parents picked out and purchased almost all of it. Consequently I get as much of a varied reaction from the people I come into contact with. Some people express a desire to place me under a label; most commonly I am asked if I am a goth or a hippie. I acquired likings toward certain clothing styles at different times, but I have never grown out of any of the various things I like to wear, leading to the aforementioned confusion. As I grew I took what I liked and it has stuck with me; This can be seen as a kind of hokey metaphor for my personality. It is taken from all manner of people and experiences, mashed together to form some dude who just doesn’t seem to fit in one box.

During the course of my childhood I did not have a great deal of parental involvement. We communicated but I feel like I had space to develop my own way of thinking. To this day I benefit from thinking on my feet and being aware of my cognitive self. I feel very at home with my mind, and this has enabled me to help many of my friends in their own psychological turmoil. I would not be surprised to see myself in the future as a counselor.

The current career that I plan to pursue is that of a high school teacher (primarily in math). I’ve grown quite a passion for teaching during high school, and I think my ideals regarding the conduction of a class says a lot about my personality. I would like to do two fundamental things; First, to know the material and refrain as much as possible from using pre-made assignments and exercises out of the textbook, and second, to treat my students like I would treat my fellow staff and encourage them to challenge me. The first goal comes out of my contempt for math classes which involve a whole bunch of repetitions of the same action. By taking the work into my own hands, I could not only cut down on unnecessary amounts of shallow problems, I could go further to connect the property or theorem to other applications and skills, challenging the students to think more deeply about the material. The students, however, would also have a large role in my ideal classroom as I would encourage them to be open about their opinions, confusions, and doubts. Thus it is that a teacher may learn from their students, and furthermore, that I may pursue my career in as dynamic a fashion as my identity.

Identity is a big word. It means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. What I have previously explained touches upon some of my ideas about identity as well as some of my own, very general characteristics. Unfortunately, being a broad picture it is not a deep one. After getting into the swing of things I feel there’s so much I would like to say in order to establish my identity as can be seen by the class, but the truth is that I have a hard time worrying about my identity and how other people see it. I can talk about my ideals and my behavior and my emotions, but these seem partially restricted to me. As much as I explain in a six page essay or a six hundred page book, I believe that the closest one can come to discovering the identity of another is to interact with them in person. There is another window I look out of, where we’re all just beings, here on this planet. We’re all just organisms playing whatever part we might, which essentially means changing. I see the universe as a bunch of constantly fluctuating energy – therefore by having a dynamic personality I have found how to, without a doubt, “go with the flow.”