Cultural Identity is a large part of a person’s identity.

Each person’s is like their own

thumbprint on the world. Each identity is different because there are many different influences

that can cause a person to be part of many other cultures. Many cultures could influence an

individual, whether it be spiritualistic, emotionally, and physically. There have been many

cultures that have affected my life whether it be sports culture, nerd culture, movie culture, or

being a product of my hometown I have found that I am who I am because of these many

different ideologies that I have been a part of in my life. There was some culture shock when I

first came to college because Dubuque is much different from back home. Me and my family

joke about how there is a back home me and a college me and that seems to be true a lot of the

time. I definitely act differently at school then I do back home with my friends and family.

I definitely belong to the sports culture due to many factors. Sports culture can also be

broken down into two groups: ones the play sports and the ones that know everything about

sports. I fall under both of those categories. I have been raised playing all the sports that I could

physically play. Through high school I played baseball, football, and basketball and I still play

baseball in college. My friends and I play other sports in our downtime because we are simply

bored. From personal experience I feel that sports culture people have lower attention spans

and get bored easily. We athletes always feel the need to be doing some activity or the other.

Then I also know everything about the sports I played. It is literally one of the few things me

and my friends talk about on a consistent basis. There is definitely a stereotype of people who

can only talk about sports and I for sure know that my life basically revolves around sports. A

sub culture, for me personally, is baseball. Playing baseball is definitely a life choice and takes

up a lot of your time. My family and I have spent a lot of time and money going to games,
practices, and getting equipment to actually play. Travel baseball Is definitely a cult if you look

at all the families the put in time and work to make all the tournaments and games work.

Baseball goes year round and requires a big part of your life to be dedicated to baseball. This

part of my cultural self has allowed me to grow into a competitive person that wants to get the

work done in my life without failure. This has allowed me to be successful in school because I

expect nothing less than doing well in my life.

Another part of my cultural identity comes from school culture. I certainly act differently

when I am at school. I sit in the same desk I sit in on the first day, I talk differently than I do

when I am out with my friends, and I have a different demeanor when I am at school. My

friends at school allow me to be a different person than my friends back home do. My school

friends and I have different mannerisms and ideas of fun than my friends at home. So it was big

change for me to come into college and act like a person I wanted to be instead of the person

my friends expected me to act like back home. I was allowed to be more open and confident

when I came to school than I will probably be back home. Although I am the same person the

people I have met her and befriended have allowed me to become a different person than I

was. So there is a Loras College culture that rubs off on the way I act. I would be a different

person if went to a different school than Loras. So, there is many different cultures from the

many schools there are. If we are being honest my high school also played a part in my cultural

identity as well.

The final part of my cultural identity is my family identity. My dad was youngest if six in

an Irish family and my mother has never been particularly close to her family. This definitely has

played a part in my upbringing. To me family is everything and it becomes before everything.

My dad’s family was super close knit and they wanted to keep that the same with their

children. I am closer to my cousins, aunts, and uncles than most of the people in my life. Very

rarely in my life have I put my friends above my family. They have always been there for me and

have raised me into the person I am today. Now that is without saying that certain

characteristics that my family has that not everyone else’s families have. My family has

different ideals than most families so we have a different culture than other families. This has

affected the way I have grown up and has created my first layer of my cultural identity.

To conclude, my cultural identity is a factor of many different ideals combining into the

personality I am today. I have lived my whole life learning how to become a person from the

factors I have mentioned above. If you would strip that all away from me I would not be the

person I am today. The cultural identity that I have is a puzzle that is continually growing and

adding pieces due to all the cultures I have been a part of in my life. Cultural identity can be

attributed to many different mediums and ideologies. Culture is based on these different

ideologies and values. These make us who we are and what we hope to be. Eventually when we

have children or in a position to teach the next generation we will be in a position to affect that

child’s culture. We are just as much an impact on culture just as much as everything else in our

life.