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Zach McCurterUNST 101October 28, 2007

Exploration Paper

The status set of my identity in which I believe has impacted myunderstanding of myself and the role I have in society the most issocial class. More specifically poverty. I feel this status has influencedmy understanding of myself more than any other status set I belong to,because social class affects your life in many ways in a society andworld driven by money. Money is the most important thing in the livesof many people and it is hard to blame a person for feeling that waywhen in our society without money you would not even be able to eat.It is this belief of importance instilled by our society that I believehelped me become who I am today. Growing up my family never hadmuch money, although I can not remember caring too much until I wasold enough to realize the importance society places on it. If you do nothave something it is hard to really become controlled and manipulatedby it. As I look back on it I am glad I did not have a wealthy familygrowing up, although college would be a lot easier now, because itforced me to look at society, and eventually life in a different way. Ihate the fact our world is run by money and greed. For example,almost all politically powerful people have the opportunity to becomepowerful because of their wealth. When many of our very intelligent

people spend their time programming video games, design I-pods,creating vehicles that will not be too fuel conservative so thatcompanies can be profitable at the expense of our own planet it showsthe importance money has in our society. To relate this status morespecifically to myself it has helped me to realize the importance of thought and will in everything you do and what you plan to do. Thisstatus has also been somewhat of a hindrance in understanding andintegrating other ascribed statuses into the understanding of myself.First of all I would have to tell you that I really do not understandmyself and I would be very impressed if someone as young as I amreally did, but I am gaining an understanding more each day. Socialclass makes it hard for me to realize that I am considered privileged inmy society and world just because of the fact that I am a whiteheterosexual male. There have been many defining experiences that have aided myunderstanding of myself which occurred due to this status set. When Iwas around seven or eight my parents were divorced and I lived withmy mom, her boyfriend, his son, and my sister. We moved aroundfrequently and wherever we lived my moms boyfriend would alwaysturn the garage or living room into an extra bedroom so that we couldall have our own rooms. My mom was always sewing and would makehalf of the clothes we wore. I would say the first ten years of my life Iwore sweat pants and shirts about ninety percent of the time. I was

never really picked on as a kid but I’m sure I always looked like thepoorest kid in my class. Living in a family like mine I learned how to beresourceful and never could really focus on materialistic thingsbecause I didn’t have many things to be materialistic about. It forcedme to find something outside of my house to keep me occupied, so Iplayed just about every sport I could get into and for a large part of mylife that was all I focused on. If I wanted to get something that costmoney I had to work for my mom’s boyfriend, who was a contractor, inorder to get it. In many ways this helped me become responsible as ayoung person however it also caused a lot of problems for me as well.Moving around so often meant changing schools frequently and neverreally keeping the same friends as a lot of people growing up do. Beingout of the house more often than not eventually had a very negativeeffect on my family life. However I have learned to think about thepositive aspects more than the negative. I went to schools wereeveryone seemed rich and schools where no one really was. Schoolsthat were almost all white and schools that were predominately not. These experiences helped me to look at society from a variety of ways.Even though I have already told you I was and am still today a part of the status of being poor, being defined in this status has made merealize the insignificance the status plays or should play in the contentof character. I feel grateful I am a part of this status set because Iappreciate what I have and look at people for who they are and not