Over the course of life, we are always looking to find ourselves. We are looking to create our individual identities and find what makes us who we are. Finding yourself and keeping your identity is not always easy. In our culture, we are always pressured to be a certain way. We can see this quite easily from a young age up through adulthood. Society pushes us to be “normal”, and if we don’t fit the norm, we are ridiculed. We as a culture are pushed in a certain direction and forced to try and fit certain molds and we can be changed and can change ourselves to fit into society.
A good example of being pushed to fit a mold is the military. Gwynne Dyer talks about the military creating a group identity in her article “Anybody’s Son Will …show more content…
In the article, dyer starts off by talking about basic training. Basic training is a way of physical and mental manipulation. In the article she describes that “basic training involves a brief but intense period of intense period of indoctrination whose purpose i not really to teach the recruits basic military skills, but rather to change their values and their loyalties” (Dyer 1985). In basic training, the recruits are somewhat brainwashed. They are beaten down mentally and put through extremely difficult physical tests. This is the start of the manipulation into the mold. The drill instructors know that the young men are easily molded and they take advantage of that. They abuse and insult the recruits with the sole pUrpose of breaking the recruits pride, confidence, and ability to resist the will of the marines (Dyer 1985). They …show more content…
In “Making it by Faking It: Working-Class Students in an Elite Environment", Robert Granfield discusses the way middle class and working class students fell in ivy league schools. Many of the students felt out of place because of the differences in their backgrounds. They felt unprepared. One student described an instance of feeling inadequate: “I remember in a business class the professor seemed to assume that we all had fathers that worked in business and that we all understood about family Investments. He said “you 're all pretty much familiar with this because of your family background.” I remember thinking, doesn 't he think that there 's any people in this law school who come from a working-class background” (Granfield 1991). The students felt like they had to fake their identities. They bought suits and made sure that their outward appearance was up to par with the other students. Because society is so focused on people being normal, that it is so easy to fake who we are to fit the
A good example of being pushed to fit a mold is the military. Gwynne Dyer talks about the military creating a group identity in her article “Anybody’s Son Will …show more content…
In the article, dyer starts off by talking about basic training. Basic training is a way of physical and mental manipulation. In the article she describes that “basic training involves a brief but intense period of intense period of indoctrination whose purpose i not really to teach the recruits basic military skills, but rather to change their values and their loyalties” (Dyer 1985). In basic training, the recruits are somewhat brainwashed. They are beaten down mentally and put through extremely difficult physical tests. This is the start of the manipulation into the mold. The drill instructors know that the young men are easily molded and they take advantage of that. They abuse and insult the recruits with the sole pUrpose of breaking the recruits pride, confidence, and ability to resist the will of the marines (Dyer 1985). They …show more content…
In “Making it by Faking It: Working-Class Students in an Elite Environment", Robert Granfield discusses the way middle class and working class students fell in ivy league schools. Many of the students felt out of place because of the differences in their backgrounds. They felt unprepared. One student described an instance of feeling inadequate: “I remember in a business class the professor seemed to assume that we all had fathers that worked in business and that we all understood about family Investments. He said “you 're all pretty much familiar with this because of your family background.” I remember thinking, doesn 't he think that there 's any people in this law school who come from a working-class background” (Granfield 1991). The students felt like they had to fake their identities. They bought suits and made sure that their outward appearance was up to par with the other students. Because society is so focused on people being normal, that it is so easy to fake who we are to fit the