Understand adolescent identity development

By Gianna Suppa
College of Education
Long Island University, C. W. Post
February, 2011

My definition of identity would be what someone considers themselves, such as characteristics of one’s personality, nationality, family, friends, career, etc. Overall, it would be a sense of who you are, where you are heading in life, and where you fit into society. There are many various aspects of identity such as gender identity, sexual identity, relational identity, cultural identity, and spiritual identity.

I believe I first began to wonder who I was when I started looking at colleges in high school. I began to wonder who I was because I had to figure out what I wanted to with the rest of my life and what kind of school did I want to attend. Did I want to go somewhere that Greek life was big? Did I want to go to a school with a small campus or big campus? Did I want to go away to school or commute? Did I want to be in a city or a small town? There were so many decisions to be made at that time. I found myself thinking a lot about what type of person I was and where I felt I was going to best fit in.

After choosing to stay home and attend community college for two years and then transfer to CW Post, I finally believe I know who I am. The first factor that identifies who I am is my nationality; I am an Italian-American whose parents were born in Italy. Also I have a great passion for traveling and visiting family in Italy. I also feel that choosing to be a teacher says a lot about who I am, a caring and generous person who wants to share her knowledge and experience with others. And finally an element of me that I would use to identity myself is a good friend, someone who is always there for her friends, loves to spend time and enjoy their company and treats them like family.

As an adolescent, I would identify myself as an athlete but also a friend to everyone. I never felt that someone didn’t like me in high school, I talked to everyone whether you were a “nerd”, “athlete”, or a “loner”; it made no difference to me if I liked you and wanted to talk to you I would. Through my years of talking to other individuals who went to different high school than me, I discovered that since my graduating class was less than 200 students, most everyone got along with each other and there was not a huge sense of competition with other students as often there is with larger schools. I feel that identity in middle school and high school can greatly affect learning because often time’s students are more concerned about what other people think of them and what they need to do to be the “popular” student. Identity is something that I feel every adolescent struggle with, some more than other but I feel that it is an individual learning experiences and forces many young adults to mature and learn how to handle things.