Who are you? What makes you unique? What makes you who you are? My first project in grade 10 is all about identity. So, think about it. What do you think is your identity? To help you, try to answer these questions. What makes you unique? What makes you who you are? Who are you?

I think identity is is really the different things that make you different and unique from everyone else. This could be a variety of things. It could be where you were born, where you live now, your interests, your beliefs, anything that affects how you view others, yourself, and the world.

Many people in my class, myself included, were still a little confused about our identity. To help us with this, we made a “bio poem.” This poem was sort of a way to help us understand and identify the things that make us unique. For example, one of the lines in my bio poem is “Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.” This is a major part of my identity. Growing up in Deep Cove, I have had the opportunity to live in such a safe and wildlife-rich environment, that I really take that for granted and didn’t realize that it isn’t like this in many other places around the world. It is a major part about my interests, and my beliefs.
We also wrote a letter to our future selves. I particularly liked this assignment, because it let me really identity the things about my personality I want to change, and the things about my personality I want to keep/stay the same.

In our weekly zoom class, Ms. WIllemse read us a story!! This story was called “The Bear that Wasn’t” It was about a bear who is mistaken for a hairy man wearing a fur coat. It is a funny story, obviously not based off a true story, but it really addresses labeling and mislabeling. It is very easy to be labelled as something you are not, and that can be something that makes you unique. If you are labelled you aren’t, that can bring unwanted things like a fear to show the real you, or a fear of changing because you are scared of what people will label you after, and those fears can be a real factor about your identity.
I think the biggest part about your identity is your upbringing. If you grow up in a community that really likes spaghetti, odds are you will grow up to really like spaghetti, and that will really affect what you want for dinner. That is now a part of your identity. It is something that makes you who you are, it is a unique part about what makes you, you.

I made a gif! I made a double exposure gif! For those of you who don’t know what that is, i basically merged two(or in my case 3) photos together, and then animated it. Now, it would pretty silly if I wrote a whole post on identity, and then the final piece isn’t about identity. So of course, this gif is about my identity.

So I have a photo of me as the centrepiece of course. In the background are two photos. One is the Canadian flag. I think this is a very big piece of my identity. My views, beliefs, values, are all affected by the fact that I live in Canada. The second photo is me playing basketball. Basketball is really the main thing i do in my spare time, besides eat. So, naturally it is a major part of who i am.
Now the nuts and peas flying across the screen are probably very confusing to someone who doesn’t know me. I have a nut and seed allergy. Well the list is much bigger than that, but nuts and seeds are my only anaphylactic allergy (I die if i eat it, because my throat closes it). This is a big part of who I am. I like to say I can’t have half of the chocolate bars in the world, because of nuts. A lot of foods are off limits to me because of allergies, so it is a major factor about what makes me unique. That is my explanation on why nuts are flying across the screen.

Identity is a tricky thing to figure out. It takes time and effort to understand what makes you who you are, but I think once you do figure it out, a lot of your choices and behaviours really make more sense to you. I am excited to see what the rest of this project includes.