Boston, Massachusetts, US
Posts: 1
Naturally most people care, to a certain degree, about what other people think of them and for highschoolers it can be natural to be very opinionated on other people. Unconsciously people often cater their outside appearance to match what they think others want to see. I think we’re all guilty of this at some point, I know I am. It gets to a point where, as the saying goes, “fake it til you make it”, one can actually start to see themselves as the person who they've been displaying. In the article “The Complexity of Identity: Who Am I?” Beverly Daniel Tatum suggests that how we identify ourselves “depends in large part on who the world around me says I am. Who do my parents say I am? Who do my peers say I am? What message is reflected back to me”. This relates back to our discussion on conformity, we don’t want to be punished socially so we change what we would normally do to fit into a social standard. When people change to move towards the current trends they get applauded and complimented, this can come in the forms of an increase in compliments or suddenly making more friends. On the other hand, when they move in the opposite direction they are often met with disapproval. In high school this phenomenon is especially amplified. During the teenage years is when a person is figuring out who they are and maturing into their adult selves. These years are heavily affected by our peers, so how do we really know if we’ve been manufactured by society or if we’ve truly found ourselves?
What I noticed from the identity vessels was that many of them weren’t that different on the outside and the inside. This could either mean that a lot of students wear themselves on their sleeve, or that a lot of us have internalized the person we project to the world. I don’t think either option is good or bad, but I do think it can be uncomfortable to know that who you are is different then how people see you so it can be easier to limit that dissonance and see yourself the same way.
Boston, Massachusetts, US
Posts: 1
What shapes how we see ourselves, how others see us and how we see others? How do our individual identities impact our personal and social choices? How are personal and social identities connected and how are they different?
Personal identity is shaped by our own experiences and what we have witnessed from others. As someone who aspires to travel the world and has had a good amount of experience with my own traveling, I am a firm believer that if you go far enough, you learn more about yourself. Does this mean that taking a vacation automatically leads to self-actualization? Not entirely. I think you learn more about yourself for a variety of reasons, such as experiencing first-hand a lifestyle that is completely foreign to you, allowing you to see a glimpse of something unlike your typical city or small town life, or meeting new people and finding your own community. How others see us can be a little different. After walking around the Seevak Room and seeing a variety of different identity vessels ranging from shoeboxes, statues, and books, it was evident to me after looking at the inside of all of these projects that my peers viewed themselves based on the things that they loved doing, and the memories that came with doing it. Some had specific family events that shaped their identity, while others may have talked about sports events. While we are shaped by the things we have endured and the encounters we’ve had with ourselves, others’ perceptions of us are purely based on what they’re able to see with the naked eye, only the physical aspects of our being. Society has a variety of preconceived notions that are put on different groups of people because of preexisting stereotypes that people have been following for decades. This same fact also plays into how we see others, whether we like to admit it or not. Whether you live on the East Coast, West Coast, or anywhere in between, everyone has their own preexisting beliefs on people they’ve never met or do not know because of what society has said about them. In Khalil Gibran’s Fear, he states “It’s not about disappearing into the ocean, but of becoming the ocean.” (Gibran 18-19). This quote showcases how broadening your horizons isn’t always bad, and how embracing your own opinions while still embracing those around you is a chance at growth, not loss. “Becoming the ocean” can serve as an allegory to dismissing your personal identity and stances to fit in with those around you, even if you don’t agree, for the sole purpose of feeling a sense of belonging with others. Personal and social identities can differ from each other because one’s social identity could potentially not as be as true to someone as their personal identity is to them.
East Boston, MA, US
Posts: 1
Yes, I believe that our identity is really malleable. This is because we are influenced by our environment and the people around us, which influence the way we think, talk, see ourselves, and others. Society limits our ability to change and grow throughout our lives by us being in an age of technology, where we get a Snapchat notification saying this is what you were doing a year ago, for example, this notification of the memory could show the person you were a year ago, and then feelings and actions of your old identity clawing it's what out. Renner, in “How Social Media Shapes Identity,” touches on this idea by saying, “It was getting really weird. I had my new friends from New York posting about queer performance art, and these guys from my high school posting about dirt biking in a gravel pit and tagging me in photographs from high school. I needed to move on.” Social psychological theories impact humans’ willingness to view and accept the identities or the growth of others, because our identity is not something we are born with; our identities are always changing, something is always going to edit our identity, whether it is an experience, the people we hang out with, our political and religious views. All of these things make up who we are, whether we realize it or not. For example, as I was observing the identity vessels, I saw that many of them had pictures of our friends, our faith. These things have shaped the way we think and we view other people. I also saw things that other people enjoyed, like sports, which have a big influence on our identity. I was surprised by some of the vessels because when I looked at the ones that people who I dont talk to and I saw how they are really like on the outside, and it really made me realize that I have misjudged them. Our individual identities impact our persona and social choices by influencing us to go towards choices that were are familiar with and that we know that we are going to be validated, and feel like we belong.
Boston , Massachusetts, US
Posts: 1
In my peers' identity vessels I learned many value ideas similar to myself. Most students had pictures of their friends and family, references to music, and references to activities they participated in which I also included in my identity vessel. I also learned how much of a window my peers are willing to give to the class. When I worked on this project, I was worried about being judged for including more personal information about the inside of myself but I soon realized that it is also important to show people that on the inside they are not alone either. I was surprised to see the different approaches students took to the vessel as I remember one student filling their identity vessel full of shoes while another student used a helmet for their vessel. This also showed that while many value ideas similar to mine students had unique ways to showcase their identity thus making it very different from mine
While viewing my peers' vessels I noticed how many of the students' vessels included pictures of people who matter to them. I found this interesting as the people we surround ourselves with shapes us into who we are today making our identities malleable. Those people included on their vessels changed them one way or another whether it be through a group and that student conforming or just having their views changed by one person. This shows that we value those around us but more importantly that we allow those people to influence our personal and social choices. By putting the picture of you and a friend or in a friend group you are actively telling yourself and everyone around you that you allowed yourself to be influenced by those people further confirming to yourself that you choose that way for your identity to be shaped.
Beverly Daniel Tatum discusses how “The parts of our identity that do capture our attention are those that other people notice, and that reflect back to us”. To explain this quote; the aspects of ourselves that we notice are reflected back to us through our friends engaging in the same behavior that they saw from us. I found this interesting because this actively allows us to realize the decisions we make with our personalities and identities. Our friends constantly reflecting on these things makes us aware of what we are doing, further changing our perspective of ourselves and possibly causing us to change ourselves even more so that we don’t engage in that behavior or engage in it even more.
Boston, Massachussets, US
Posts: 1
Personal Identity and Vessel Reflection
Due to humans being visual creatures, the first thing that you note about people is how they present themselves. Clothes, Hair, and even things like gender and race, subconsciously dictate how we evaluate the people around us. As said in an essay by Beverly Daniel Tatum, the way in which we see ourselves is largely based off of how others see and treat us. A lot of things that, in other circumstances, would be inconsequential to us, are amplified due to the value that they are given by society. For example, we likely wouldn’t think about things like race and general physical appearance if it didn’t alter how treated us in the drastic way that it does. The fluidity of oneself should also be taken into consideration when talking about identity. There are things that will remain relatively static throughout our lives, there are also things that will morph into something completely different from what they once were. This paired with the longevity of social media has made it harder for us to be able to shake things off that don’t correspond with how we view ourselves in the present. As much as we may try to control the way we come off to people, it is ultimately not fully up to us. Yes we can change the way we act, look, and in some cases, the way we think, but being anything but our authentic selves will only leave us feeling empty in the end. Due to this, I believe that in our identity vessel project, the outside of the vessel was ultimately an extended version of the inside, as we cannot fully understand the way in which we are perceived by our peers due to the biases that we understandably have, as we are the only ones that have lived our lives. The vessels didn’t feel as authentic when thinking about how, due to social conformity, there were probably more things omitted from the vessel than things included, since they were made with the knowledge that these would be shared with our peers. Regardless of how authentic people were being in their identity vessels, it did provide me more insight into the people I share a classroom with that I didn’t have before, as for a large portion of them, all I had to go by was physical appearance and a couple opinions they might have shared aloud in class. Ultimately, in this class I have been able to gain a deeper understanding of how multifaceted and complex Identity, and the relationship it has with personal and social perspectives, really is.
West Roxbury, MA, US
Posts: 1
Every single person sees themselves in a different way. This was made very clear in the identity vessel walkthrough with everyone having different things on the outside and inside of their box. One thing that I noticed is many people had their activities and the fact that they were seniors on the outside but their personality traits on the inside. I found that interesting because personality traits is something that you would see on the outside not the inside for most people. That shows that we attach certain value to what we do and it puts us into groups which affects how we interact with others. I think that for us at this age identity is still really malleable because we are still growing older and learning a lot more. However, once people get older I feel it becomes more difficult to shift identity because you have many preconceived ideas that will not change soon. A lot of us don’t want to accept new things once we get to a certain point in life and we have seen more things. I learned about what my peers like to do and how they see themselves. This confirmed some of my notions of them already but also introduced me to some new information that I did not know. People put information about their families and different things that they do not necessarily part of their outward identity. This reinforced the concept in class that we learned about where people show you what they want to see and won’t outwardly show things that they do not think the group would approve of so they pick and chose what they consider apart of their identity. This need for approval causes some people to suppress their individuality in order to satisfy the group. I was not super surprised by any vessels but some were very interesting to see.
