Personal Narrative: Personal Identity

Identity Essay
Five years ago, I started volunteering at Lifestriders, a therapeutic horseback riding center. There I was able to form strong relational ties with the children I worked with. Throughout high school, I would wake up at eight o’clock every Saturday morning to go work with “my kids”, and the more I went, the more I fell in love with working with children. However, for me this experience wasn’t just a one way street; as I taught the kids things, they taught me about myself. They taught me to not take my many privileges for granted, while helping me improve my self awareness, patience, and views on society. More importantly, they taught me to enjoy the little things in life and to think of others before myself. Specifically, they widened my view of the disabled, so that I was able to look past the stereotypes that society gives them. As I quickly found out, every individual is much more than the sum of their stereotypes, and my passion towards extracting the negative connotations with being disabled has …show more content…
Specifically, socialization is the process of learning how to become a functioning member of society, by internalizing societal values, beliefs, and norms (Conley, 2015). In order to become properly socialized, an individual must be able to identify their personal statuses and roles. A status is a specific social position occupied by an individual, while, a role is the behaviors and jobs associated with a status (Conley 2015). For example, society socializes children to act as students. A status a child could hold would be that of a student. The roles associated with this status include listening in class, raising one’s hand before speaking, and obeying the teacher. The idea of holding different statuses and the impact they have on one's socialization has strongly affected my life and have helped me create my personal identity and sense of

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