To all my identities I've had before

Okay, here's the deal. I just wrote 2500 words for my English class on Friday night and my professor is probably going to hate it since it's not well-structured enough and all that stuff. If I let that happen that would mean I just lost 4 hours of my life (skipping the fact I'm one step closer to getting my Associate's Degree) not including the pizza break. Honestly, I had fun with it so maybe, just maybe you will too. Enjoy my English 01 homework!

Who are you?: Apply Sociological theories to explain your identity- your becoming

There are many factors that shape our identity. There were different people, beliefs, points of view or even countries that shaped mine. As much as we’d like to believe that we are our own people, we’re not. Our friends and family most definitely influence the way we act and the way we think. ‘... identities are complex constructions with several axes of identity (Gauntlett, 2002, p. 13 ff.). These include, amongst other things, cultural and ethnic affiliation, gender, age, educational status, and social class.’ (vom Orde, 2016). All of the above can also be organized in the three sociological theories that are: structural functionalism, conflict theory and symbolic interactionism. For many of us it’s simple, structural functionalism comes from school, our parents or teachers and conflict theory is our struggle when we grow up and realize life is not all black and white. Then symbolic interactionism is those little things and gestures on a daily basis. However, I’d like to present my identity in a different way. Since I consider myself a global citizen, I believe that each country I’ve lived in before has shaped my identity in different ways. In this essay I’d like to apply our three sociological theories into my crazy international identity.

For most people, including me structural functionalism is something our childhood is based on. Our parents tell us what kind of chores we need to do in order to get the TV time. They tell us we need to go to school like other kids our age and then at school we are told what we can and cannot do on its premises. On top of that I was born and raised in Poland, a country more catholic than Vatican itself (I’m not joking). Very early on I learned that kids who don’t go to our ‘religion class’ were considered outsiders. I didn’t really know why those kids wouldn’t participate with us, I heard that their parents were in cults or whatever else that a girl my age couldn’t really understand. What I knew was that for some reason those kids seemed to always be weird. However, the more I grew up the more American movies I started watching. From those movies I learned everything I needed to know (not really) about other countries, other religions and most importantly I learnt about being gay. My parents forbid me watching those movies but of course, that didn't stop me. By the age of 15 I was quite opinionated and started asking our priest questions like ‘why men can’t love men?’ or ‘do you think that it’s right to say that people who don’t go to church are going to hell since most of the world doesn’t go to the catholic churches?’. One day after me proclaiming that Buddhism seems to be more reasonable than Catholicism, my mum let me quit religion class and become an outsider like all those word kids I used to avoid. Poland has really tried to put their basics of structural functionalism into my mind. My mum taught me it was my responsibility to cook and clean up the house. She has always followed my dad's dreams and sacrificed everything for her children. She (nor my grandma) didn’t approve of me listening to music in church or talking about gay rights. My family was never okay with me speaking my mind, neither were my school or my teachers. The last time when I got myself an ultimate disapproval from my Literature Teacher was when I was in my senior year and she was asking everyone what college and major did we choose. I answered I had decided to take a gap year. She said it was a huge mistake. People in Poland don’t believe in gap year. They don’t believe in gay rights or other religions. They don’t approve of women’s choice, immigrants or generally being different. While these are the basics of my upbringing, while I was taught all those things my whole childhood and had to listen to ignorant racist jokes of my males friends and family members every single day… all these factors have shaped who I am today. They created the 18 year old me who left for the USA and let other countries shape her identity.

Still, even after years of living outside of Poland to this day I believe there are some important rules about how the society should work. Very often my American friends do not agree with me. Sometimes it’s about little things that American people think that are silly but they drive me crazy and sometimes it’s about very important fundamentals of society. As a babysitter in the US I’ve had a lot of experience in dealing with many kinds of parents. Let me tell you, the raising model in the US is very different from European one. Back in Poland (but also most of Europe) we feed our children with whatever we cook for adults, we don’t ever have snow days and most importantly we move out as soon as we go to college and never come back to our family home. However, these are little things that kind of bother me while living in America but there are also the ones I deeply believe in and are not the case in the US. As a European person I simply cannot understand why there’s no free education or free health care in the United States. I also couldn’t believe when I heard that paid time off is a luxury and usually it’s only a few days a year. Back in Europe I used to have at least 20 days of paid vacation each year plus many days of national and office holidays. I used to travel all the time and once I started working in Virginia I realized that wouldn’t be the case. You might think that all those things I mentioned above are only some random facts about two different countries but these facts have shaped my world view. While these days I live in America I cannot imagine spending my life with only 8 days of vacation a year, paying a small fortune for my children’s education and worrying I can’t get them into ER because I might not be able to afford it. Free education, access to healthcare and taking a two week road trip with my husband are things I can’t compromise on. To me these are some of the most important factors to a happy life and all of that comes from my European upbringing.

Conflict theory didn’t appear until later in my life. While when I was a teenager I tried to understand other perspectives and minorities I really had no idea about the real world. However, once I moved to the US I became a minority and the reality hit me. I never thought I would call myself an immigrant. It seemed like a word reserved for poor people or for my host family’s house keepers. Of course when I was an au pair I was an immigrant as well but I was here on a special visa, my host family gave me a phone, a car, a gym membership and anything I could ever want. I had absolutely no bills and simply had no idea what real costs of living in America are. As soon as I married my husband and left my host family’s house I realized I lived in a functional structuralism bubble. In my life as an au pair my role was to take care of my host siblings and in return I was given anything I needed. I didn’t even consider myself as an immigrant at that time. I thought I was better than that. Then my husband and I moved into our new apartment, I had to get my own car and apply for a green card. Suddenly I realized I had no legal right to work in this country and it wasn’t something I could just go around. Also the car dealership finally let us get a car but our car loan was… well, it was a rip off but we had no other choice than to accept it. For months I struggled with the immigration paperwork and I couldn’t even get my driving license. I had no rights. I felt like I was treated like less of a human because of being an immigrant. I was so frustrated that I wrote a book called : “Green Card Marriage''. While I think it wasn’t my best work and to be honest I wish I could rewrite it which I might soon… when I was writing that book being an immigrant became my identity. Realizing how unfair the immigration system is and speaking out about it became a huge part of my life. These days I’m proud of being an immigrant and if anyone ever asks me, I will let them know what’s wrong with the system.

As I said earlier, the conflict theory came a bit later into my life but once it did, it never left. Currently, I have a semi-good job in marketing and my husband is a personal trainer. As a young (bi-racial and bi-national) married living in Northern Virginia very quickly we realized how our semi-good jobs are not enough to live here. Renting in the area we call home is ridiculously expensive. Buying a house would be a great option since even the highest monthly mortgage rate we could get would be way cheaper than what we pay for our rent. Yet, the banks don’t care that we pay way more for our rent than we’d pay for a house, they still won’t approve us for anything even close to what we’d need in order to purchase a house in Northern Virginia. Recently we started thinking of moving to a different state just because we can’t afford living here.

Symbolic interactionism is my favorite theory. It’s all about simple things, daily gestures and interactions that very often we don’t think twice about. Also it is a theory that was affected by my international experiences the most. Being born and raised in Poland gave me the emotional intelligence of a 5 year old American child. Before I met my husband I despised hugging, I had no idea how to express my feelings and I’d rather die than say “I love you” to anyone other than my girl friends. I remember when I moved to the US for the first time. People were smiling at me on the street and saying “Hi, how are you?” without stopping to hear my answer. At the store when I’d say “I’m good, and you?” they seemed surprised that I asked and sometimes they would even ignore me! See, in every single country symbolic interactionism could be very different from what you know. These days it’s completely the opposite. I smile at everyone on the street, chat to strangers about our dogs all the time and I barely ever answer to “How are you?”. What’s even weirder is coming back to Poland. Once or twice I smiled at a person in the store and they gave me a dirty look like I was being crazy for doing that. My bubbly personality, and expressive reactions are usually weirding out people as well. Well, and most importantly ordering food in my native language became just too awkward. See, the phrases to order something in Polish and English are very different from each other. The way you place an order is just not the same. When I’m in Poland I get very confused and start saying English phrases in Polish which doesn’t make sense and makes my friends laugh. I guess being socially confused is a huge part of being bilingual.

After all those years spent on different continents I know one thing for sure, food is one universal language. Wherever you go, people want to feed you. They want you to try their favorite food, they want to take you to their favorite restaurants or cook for you their national dish. I don’t have to say that as a European person I take food seriously. I know that American people would say they love good food as well but let’s be honest… a lot of American foods don’t deserve to even be called foods. Before I came to the US I never even heard of pancake mix or instant mashed potatoes. Toasted bread is not supposed to be eaten on a daily basis. Freshly baked bread should be available in any kind of grocery store. Milk should never be watered down. I could go on and on but the point is, my identity was shaped by the European love for good food. When I went to Indonesia I stayed with local families that didn’t speak English. They only smiled at me and kept on talking in their own language and I would smile back talking in English. We couldn’t understand each other but there was no time I saw them happier than when they were giving me their food. Did I love everything they were giving me? Not really… but I always appreciated it. When I was working in England our office lunch was made by hired full time cooks. It would be the one thing everyone talked about and that was the time when I connected with other people. When I started dating my husband I would bring him and his roommate freshly baked goods every time I stopped by their apartment. When I met my husband’s parents for the first time during Christmas Day I brought them a basket of Polish food. When I meet people from Brazil I cannot stop talking about how amazing their food is. As I mentioned before, being bilingual or having an international background might be very confusing at times. However, to me food is an international sign of love and appreciation. Above all, it is the only thing I’m proud of if it comes to my home country.

You might think all of this is just a crazy list of facts about different countries but in real life all those facts are the factors that have shaped my identity. I’m a snobby food obsessed European who survived the horror of being in American immigration system, hates the conservative structural functionalism that her home country is based on, who is against paying for education but still dreams of going to a fancy American college (I blame Hollywood). Living in all those different countries and traveling to many more has shaped my always contradicting identity. ‘Socialization isn’t a one-time or even a short-term event.’. It happens all of our lives. I’m sure next few years that I’ll spend in the US or my future trips will keep on shaping my identity. The person I am today is not necessarily the same person I will be in 10 years. Well, or even next year.

Citations:

Heather Griffiths, Nathan Keirns Introduction to Sociology (Chapter 5, Socialization Across the Life Course)

Heike vom Orde Perspectives on identity