During a 1:1 conversation with one of my students this past week, it was revealed that she has a Birthday coming up this week. When she shared the date with me, I was ecstatic to find out that she actually shares a Birthday with my Dad. In the midst of our laughter and scripted exchanges of “No way, that is so funny!”, she pauses and interjects to say…
“Yeah, it’s my T-Swift Birthday! I’m finally turning 22.”
Aside from the intriguing and slightly terrifying dissection of the Taylor Swift song that has gained enough traction to earn it’s own Birthday title, my response was one that has become all too familiar in the past couple of years for me. With a smile, insertion of an exclamation and an uplifting phrase (“AH! That is awesome!”), and then a quick change of subject, I dodged an identity revealing bullet. Because, it is in moments like these with my students that my age becomes an awkwardly salient identity. Working inside a classroom throughout my entire Undergrad career and especially in my Student Teaching placement with 12th graders, I have learned (and in many spaces- trained) to keep my cards close when it comes to revealing details about my age to my students. Even though I am aware of my age in the spaces that I co-exist with students, I so often find myself “speaking from past experience” so often in our dialogue that I don’t necessarily feel the twinge to cloak my birth year until “T-Swift Birthday” moments occur.
This moment, and the several others just like it, made my question one of the main arguments in our reading from Shetty, Chunoo, and Cox that argues that individuals do not typically complete the phases of self authorship until their late 20’s or early 30’s (Shetty, Chunoo, & Cox, 2016, p. 131-132). While I would be mistaken to stand on a claim of being wholly self-authored, I would most definitely argue that this fact does not have to be a limiting factor in my role as a new practitioner in the field. I often feel as though my peaked fear in the “T-Swift Birthday” moments is fueled more so by the fact that I have been conditioned to view the vulnerability in revealing my age as a mistake. A mistake that, in certain scenarios, could make or break my professional position and perspective- void of my individual progression in the stages of self authorship.
Shetty, R., Chunoo, V. S., & Cox, B. E. (2016). Self-authorship in student affairs: A developmental paradox. Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice, 53(2), 131- 145.
Gabbing with Gabby 