Personal Ethnography Essay

Everyone is born without culture and unfamiliar with what socialization is and how to socialize. Socialization is a specific sociological technique that transpires through engaging with family, friends, and coworkers. By learning and understanding the expectations and societal norms, acquire society’s beliefs and familiar with societal values (Keirns, 2015). The process of socialization is taught not long after birth and then throughout our life. This is how we become effective human beings in society. As we develop from birth, we acquire gender roles, our parents nurture us, and growing older, we acquire a status within social groups.
Who am I? Presently, characterizing me would be several roles that I currently partake. I am a wife, a daughter,

My primary group is my family, the dyad, which consists of my husband; he is the one who brings home the bacon and the boss of our home. Then it composes into the larger group the relatives; consisting of my in-laws, and his siblings, and our nieces and nephews. I do not have very many family members left in my own family that grew up with me. Yet, I hardly converse with them, maybe a card during the Christmas season. The first portion of my family I consider part of an in-group, as I fit in with our family. My secondary group is my workplace, as I am there four days out of the week, which I spend 10 hours a day. Since I work with all male and only one female is it almost like working with a family. This group of my workplace I am part of feels like the out-group, as sometimes I feel I do not fit in and do not belong. Only because I am constantly finding something to do when there is nothing to do and my coworkers will sit and do nothing. The third is my peer group in which my friends and

As a child, I did not have a bunch of friends or go to many places to hang out, as father could get sick easily so I stayed home with him. I did not mind since I was daddy’s little girl. It was not until my pre-teenage years that I started getting into mischief, my friend pressured me into shoplifting at Target. I had been placed under arrest and my parents left me in a holding cell for 4 hours to set me straight; this was a formal sanction for my punishment. Peer pressure had some to do with it, as I wanted to fit in and not cast aside from the few friends I had. Most of my troubles that arose were just after the loss of my father when I was 17 years old. For months afterward, I would stay away from the family, alienate myself from everyone I cared about and argued constantly with my family when I did see them. I was devastated and completely lost when my father passed away. There I was labeled with a deviant behavior from my own family, as I spent time with teenagers that were problematic and started skipping class. Since the crowd that I was hanging out with a rebellious crowd, I started to do things I normally would not do; getting into fights, messing around with marijuana and underage drinking. My societal norms became as those I chose to hang around with, did not care what others thought, and was rude and obnoxious. The drinking and drug use helped with