Final Post

Here's what I wrote at the beginning of the year, contrasted with what I learned/think now. I'll keep the original post in white and make my comments yellow.

Who am I? This question is always so hard to answer. If the question was "what am I?" I'd have this down. I'm a living, breathing organism. A human, of the female variety (now, after taking this class, I understand so much more what it means to be a female and how society has shaped my views on gender.). When it comes down to who I am, though, I'm usually stumped. I guess the best answer is that I'm still figuring out who I am. I'm still searching for my place within the world (interesting, at least to me, to look back on our conversation about teens struggling to find a place in the world between childhood and adulthood. I felt - and still feel - that I don't belong with adults or kids... So where is my place in the world?).

But, of course, I can provide some facts about my interests and activities. I'm not sure that they define who I am, but they do determine who I spend time with, which I suppose shapes my identity in turn. I love theater. I audition as much as possible, and many of my friends are also involved in theater. I also enjoy writing. I have written several plays, one of which was performed as part of the 2008 one acts (and one was part of the one acts this year. I feel like writing helps me feel important in a way - I have a place in society, and I can do something I'm good at. In addition, my first play was about my philosophical beliefs about love and life and death, whereas my second one was about Disney princesses, archetypes, true love, and social change. My plays are actually powerful, which helps me feel like I'm making an impact). I also write poetry and the occasional short story. Currently, I compete on the Speech and Drama team. I've competed in the categories of Humorous Interpretation and Impromptu Speaking. But the thing is, I don't really think that my activities determine who I am. I think that I choose my activities because of who I am. I choose theater because I love the people, I love performing, and I love affecting the audience. I choose Speech and Drama, again, because of the people, and also because I'm very competitive. And I write because writing helps me understand the world better and helps me express myself (which is definitely really important for teens in particular). But why am I this way? What makes me a performer, and introverted (am I? I don't know...), and competitive? I think that's a part of why I want to learn about sociology: to better understand myself (I don't know if I understand myself better, but I think as a result of this course, I'm more conscious of the social forces that cause me to feel this sense of disconnect in my life).

The biggest influences in my life are probably my parents. They've put pressure on me since I was a kid. They want me to succeed, both as a professional one day and also as a person. They were also raised very differently than any of my friends' parents (cultural differences). My mother is South African, and my dad is Australian. My father was raised as an Orthodox Jew, and my mother grew up with apartheid. My father came to America to get his master's degree in architecture, and my mother came to find opportunities, to escape apartheid, and to be closer to her family, which moved years before her. Their cultures are very different than American culture. Their parents were very strict, and they both grew up surrounded by religion. Both attended Jewish schools until college. They have a very different perspective of what hard work is, because they were held to very high standards as teenagers (generational and cultural gap). They have tried to raise me by their standards. Sometimes I hate it, and sometimes I'm grateful. I hate that they want religion to be such a major part of my life, because I feel like I've never had a choice about being Jewish. I was never given a chance to determine my own beliefs. Yet I also think they've made me a better person and taught me the value of hard work and compassion.

My primary goal in life is to leave a mark. I want to be a positive presence in the lives of others, through my writing, performance, and kindness. I've been so affected by books I've read or plays and movies that I've seen, and I want to affect other people. I also want to be a good person and overcome the negative impulses that I think everyone has: impulses to hurt other people emotionally, for example. I also want to become a person conscious of the world around me. I don't want to be oblivious. I want to engage. (The community service experience really helped me with this. I left a positive mark on the world, and I took an active part in the world around me. I loved volunteering.)