Blog #7 My Identity Kit

Holaaa!!!

I am sitting here writing this blog in the morning once again because I have been studying for midterms all night long. This past week has been rough for me, just because I have been having midterms back to back. It seems like it never ends. Will it ever end? I have no idea.

One of the main times I acquired a new discourse community was when I was in middle school. I just moved from Texas and I didn't know anyone. Texas was just so different from California. In California, everyone cared so much about what they looked like and they were so confused about other states. I remember someone asked me if rode horses to class... Like really. I even got asked if I rode bulls, or if I liked wearing ten-gallon hats. I also moved to a different dance studio. Everyone had their own ways of doing things, and I just felt like I didn't belong.

 I started dancing since I was 5 years old, but then I took a 5-year break just because I didn't want to do it anymore. My parents thought it was a good idea to put me back into dance again, but I hated it. I remember my first day of dance class, I felt so out of the loop. All the girls were so good, and I just remember thinking that they would never want to be my friends. I didn't want them to know that I wasn't that good at dancing anymore. If they knew, they wouldn't want to be my friend. I also remember how the owner of the dance studio wanted to put me in an advanced ballet class, so I could catch up to them. I was like, "Why would you do this to me, I just started woman!!!" But if I look back at this time, I would not change a thing. I am so glad she put me in those advanced classes just because I got to adapt to the other girls. I pushed myself to be as good as them, and it worked. I think I push myself really hard sometimes, but I think its for the better. Over time, I started to get to know these girls better and better. I basically knew everyone that walked in and their moms. Before I knew it, the whole team became on big family.

In middle school, I began to see the same thing. The only person I knew in my middle school was my cousin Anna. I was so attached to her because she had her own group of friends, and she just seemed so established. I was such an introvert in middle school. I just knew if someone were to come up and talk to me, I would be so fun to talk to. But because I was so shy, my identity kit back then was that shy, small girl who is nice and quiet. So no one would really talk to me. I ended up joining the cheer team in 8th grade, and thats when I started to open up to people and show them how outgoing I could be.

Dance Team: Senior Night

Overtime, I ended up wanting to get out of her group of friends. I wanted to be friends with people that I clicked with, not because they were my cousins friends. So once I got to high school, I joined my school's dance team. It wasn't easy at first just because the girls had their own friends and cliques, but a couple weeks later, they started inviting me places. Before you know it, these girls because my ultimate best friends in high school. I started to realize my change within the past years and now. I feel like once I had a solid foundation of friends, I started to be more of myself and not worry about what people think. I am really bubbly person once you get to know me, and usually when people see me dance on stage they know I am confident for even being up during halftimes. I started to for this identity kit. The bubbly nice girl on the dance team. That how people knew me in high school. I was just so focused on dance and that is all people knew of me, and I figured this out when I got voted "best dancer" in my high school. I remember thinking to myself, it this what people just know me as?

Sometimes, what people think of you isn't what you think of yourself at all. I feel like my identity kit does not define me entirely. It only outlines what I am on the outside.
-Vanessa