Abstract
Various theories in life agree that life occurs in stages. As such, there are various issues that an individual takes up as he grows old while there are others that are shunned. All these occur in the process of development. There are also social changes as one goes up the ladder of life. As such, an individual is expected to know how best to adapt to the changes that life brings along. The essay below discusses resocialization as a reflection of my life. It gives a real life experience when I experienced resocialization.
Resocialization
Henslin (2010) states that “resocialization refers to the process of learning new norms, values, attitudes, and behaviors (p. 88). This therefore means that there is a process of change where an individual shifts from one social set up to another. It is therefore necessary that such an individual has the relevant experience, skills or information about dealing with the new social status. Resocialization involves shunning of old patterns of behavior and adopting new ones. It is simply a process of change He further observes that the change occurs throughout the life cycle. This brings about the concept of acquisition of new behaviors (Henslin, 2006). The paragraphs below indicate how I underwent a resocialization process.
Joining college was the biggest dream of my younger years as I always sought to make myself a well accomplished and successful person. Little did I know that as I took this path, there was need for me to put away some of the characteristics and traits that I had acquired from childhood and adopt others which would propel me to my dreams. Joining college is one of those instances when resocialization occurs.
Humans are defined by nature and nurture. That is the environment surrounding an individual greatly affects who the individual is. As for me, joining the campus environment was one of the most challenging times of my life. One of the reasons for this is that I had not been away from home for long and the environment was totally new. However, the major challenge occurred during resocialization, as explained below.
Change of attitude was one of the issues that I had to face. Through the development cycle it is a must to shun some of the old attitudes that an individual harbors (Henslin, 2010). When I joined college, I had a non-caring attitude that I had picked all the way from high school. However, I realized that I was supposed to act more responsibly. As a matter of fact, the people around me respected my opinion and I was taken as a mature individual capable of making sound decisions. I therefore had to shed the attitude and take up a more responsible one.
There is nothing as good as transforming from a dependent individual to an independent one. All through High school, I received much support from my family, especially my parents. However, this changed the moment I joined campus. There are the norms that I initially held to and these had to change in order for me to cope with my new life. For instance, I could not afford to go partying a lot or engage in anything that my friends did. Otherwise, I would drive my life in the wrong course.
Accompanying the change of norms was the change in my values system. There is no way that an individual can hold onto the same old values yet transform into an acceptable member of a new society (Henslin, 2006). On joining college, I attached more value and significance to education and nothing else. Perhaps this could be attributed to the fact that I had set on a long term goal in my life. As such, I had to live a life that made it easy for me to achieve the goal. Since life decisions are governed by our value systems, I had to adopt a system that effectively matched my purpose in life.
After adopting all these changes, an individual must show a behavioral change (Henslin, 2010). True to this, my behavior changed considerably when I joined college. Probably, this is because I made new friends who influenced my behavior, combined with the other changes that I had adopted. Furthermore, being a college student meant that there was the code of conduct that was expected from me both by the society and the school itself. Nurture has a way of influencing ones behavior. I guess it did a great deal on me.
Behavioral change acts as a precursor to character and trait acquisition. I could argue that being in college considerably changed my character. Given that I had entered a stage in life that I had to govern my own life, then it goes without saying that my character had to comply with my new status in life. In as much as this was not easy, I had to cope somehow.
In conclusion, this essay has looked at resocialization, using my experiences as a case study. Through this, I have explained how resocialization occurs and how it affects the life of an individual. One thing is clear, no matter whom we are, we must encounter resocialization at one point of our lives.
References
Henslin, J.M. (2010). Resocialization. London: Longman Publishers.
Henslin, J.M. (2006). Essentials of Sociology: a Down-to-Earth Approach. London, Longman Publishers. 88- 89.
