I am a woman, a mother, a wife, a lesbian who is gainfully employed yet still very middle class. I have a bachelor’s degree in Business Project Management yet I do not always include that in my identity. I am a college student working on my Master’s degree in Higher and Post-Secondary Education. I am White Anglo-American of German, Irish and European descent. I tend to be pretty liberal in my views of society and politics. I think life experiences have helped mold my personal identity and identify what I value and respect in others.
Being a woman, a mom and a wife are how I mostly identify myself. Being a woman I often recognize the double standards still in our everyday lives. I do find it difficult to be a woman sometimes, still in how society looks at and treats women. I feel that I often come across as defensive because if a man acted the way I did it would be expected. In the Multiculturalism on Campus text, it is noted that “the reality that women’s learning takes place in a wide variety of contexts, public, private, formal, informal, and in settings intimate and isolating”. (Cuyjet, Howard-Hamilton, & Cooper, 2011, p. 75)
There was incident that still resonates with me today. I had just gotten a promotion and an office when the telecommunications man came to set up my new phone. He commented to me after realizing it was my office, “…such a big office for such a little girl. ” It has been ten years since that incident and I still remember feeling disrespected and demised by being called “a little girl” in my work environment. As a mom, I’ve always thought my job was to raise healthy, responsible and well-adjusted children who make good decisions and are productive members of society.
My two boys are in college now and I am very proud of the fact that they both went right from high school into college without deviating. I remember telling them that they might not always like the decisions I make as a mom but they needed to respect that I want the best for them always. The boy’s father and I divorced when they were 10 and 7 years old. I do not really consider myself a single mom because their father and step-mother were very involved in the boy’s lives. There were several factors as to why we got divorced and one of them was that I wanted to live openly as a lesbian and not hide that part of myself any longer.
I do not like being labeled as a divorcee so many times I would fill out surveys and mark single rather than divorced. When I met my now wife I would often still mark single if significant other or partner was not an option on the forms. Times have changed in the last 10 years and I am now married to my partner whom I can call my wife. As a wife I live responsibly to be a good partner and friend to my wife. I do not hide my relationship from those that are close to me but I do not use it as a talking point when I introduce myself.
Often people do assume I am married to a man but until they ask or infer a gender I do not state it directly. Sometimes I like it when people infer or ask what my husband does for work because then I have a natural opportunity to correct them. I do have a bachelor’s degree, however, I was a non-traditional undergraduate student. While trying to complete my undergraduate degree I started and stopped school several times before finally completing my degree in 2001, at the age of 29. It was about that same time in my life when I was also struggling with my sexual orientation.
I had several questing moments between the end of high school and the end of college that are now reflection points. Had I been a traditional student or had different guidance during that 12 to 15 year time span things would probably have gone much differently. I struggled with a number of integrative and social identity factors during those years. In retrospect, my drive, sexual identity, along with general psychosocial and cognitive structure all were developed during that time with little guidance from my family or social network.
Establishing Identity, in Chickering’s revised theory, has much to do with sexual orientation, comfort with one’s body, and an overall secure sense of self. (Forney, Evens, M, Patten, & Renn, 2009) Married and pregnant, I still did not know what work I was going to do in life. I eventually started taking classes at ASU while working, being a wife and mother. While studying at ASU I found that I did not really fit into the traditional student model. At this point I was 23 and my peers would have been graduating from college and I was still trying to find my way.
I had a job and a family, but did not have an answer to the question, “Who am I? ” My role in life became that of employee, mother, wife and part-time college student. I had already explored faith and spirituality in a misguided attempt to find a place of belonging in my senior year of high school. This is what Sharon Daloz Parks refers to in the Forms of Knowing as Probing Commitment in her theory about faith and spirituality. (Forney et al. , 2009) I did not have a formal religion in my adolescent home.
I was introduced to the Church of Latter-day Saints by a work friend. I participated in a lot of events over about a two year period. I had thought I found a place where I was part of the community. But in reality, I had not found a good fit for me, they did not support me attending different services in different locations with my friends. My faith waned and I no longer felt a fit with the church. I also took it on myself to not explore other faiths as I felt that nothing is truly known or can be known about the existence of God.
Self-described as Agnostic I do not disbelieve nor claim any faith in God. I do not openly identify as being one quarter German and one quarter Irish. I do not have any cultural connection or family traditions that make those ethnic ties a reality for me. I am sure I take for granted that I am white. Being white I am sure has been an advantage even though I am a woman and I am gay. Being white might actually override the existence of being gay but I do not think it overrides being a woman.
I don’t have a specific example of how being white has helped me, but the more I learn about ethnic and racial identity it is clear that white has its privileges. I am not sure how my identity has directly impacted my interactions with others. I think my life experiences and personal challenges makes me more sympathetic to other people’s struggles. As a director of a large group of diverse staff I am sympathetic to those with family challenges, aging parents, sick children, educational goals and career aspirations.
I have worked hard to create an environment where my staff find me approachable and compassionate. I do not treat everyone that same but that is because everyone is not the same. Each person and situation call for a humanistic approach and a specific canned response. My journey in higher education started twenty plus years ago and I did not have a coherent pathway through college. Student engagement was elusive to me as a non-traditional student. If I would have known the questions to ask or was presented with possible pathways I may have found my answers sooner. That is not how it worked for me.
When I look at my journey through higher education and my career, I have a lot of sympathy and empathy for others struggling on their journey. Prior to this program I did not realize how much programming in the universities is focused on the development of the student. Working in the technology group has made me look at my role a little differently now. Technology allows us to produce more educational experiences and that engagement should be discriminatory. My education was important and I pursued it for many years, but I was not fully aware of the identity I was creating.
