Personal Experience Assignment Instructions
For this assignment you will write about a personal experience you have experienced or are experiencing related to Erikson’s psychosocial stages in Chapter 12 (Identity vs. Role Confusion) or 14 (Intimacy vs. Isolation).
It is very important that you do not choose an experience that is painful or overly personal. I do not want you to explore a topic that may cause psychological distress for you. Here are some topics that would be appropriate to explore, assuming you feel comfortable doing so:
- Education/career plans as you entered college or after a first career
- Entering or dissolving relationships as a young adult
- Identity (gender, sexual, cultural, religious, ethnic, etc.)
Once you have determined your topic:
- Connect the personal experience to your chosen stage
- Explore what you learned (or are learning) from the experience
- Explain how has studying lifespan development helped you understand the experience
Formatting is as follows:
- 5-8 pages (including cover page and reference page…so, 3-5 pages of actual content!)
- Your paper must contain an introduction, thesis (what you plan to discuss/argue), and a conclusion
- 12 point font
- One inch margins
- Double-spaced
- APA formatted (use the paper template in this module, not the current event template)
3 references are required (1 can and should be the textbook, the other 2 must be peer-reviewed articles. See the library guide in this module for details on how to find these articles)
As always, 60% of your grade will be based on content (did you address prompts above?), 20% of grade will be based on organization and style, and 20% of grade will be based on APA formatting/mechanics/grammar.
Don’t forget – anything written in your paper that is someone else’s idea/work/research etc. must be cited within the paper and the reference must be included at the end of the paper on the reference page. Complete the Plagiarism Tutorial in Module 0 if you are not sure how to do this.
Introduction
There are major questions in the identity vs. role confusion stage of psychological development as described by Erikson that an adolescent usually asks him/herself. These include; who am I? How should I dress? Who are my friends? What do I believe in, what careers do I want; among other similar ones, which revolve around adolescents’ minds as they transit to adulthood (Ambron & Brodzinsky, 1979). Erik Erikson identifies this as the 5th stage of psychological development. This paper will discuss a personal experience that I have had, concerning the identity vs. role confusion stage of psychological development, according to Erikson. The paper will discuss what was learned from this experience from a psychological development perspective, as well as the role played by lifespan development studies in understanding the experience.
(1,059 words)