Leaving Home for College: Expectations for Selective Reconstruction of Self

Abstract

This paper describes how 23 primarily upper-middle-class high school seniors anticipated identity changes as they prepared to leave home for college. The transition from high school to college i s a period of "liminality" during which students are structurally in between old and new statuses. We discuss how students anticipated change, planned to affirm certain of their identities, imagined creating new identities, and contemplated discovering unanticipated identities. Such interpretive effort must be understood in the context of the ambivalence they felt about leaving home and achieving independence. The data also provoke discussion of how social class membership might be implicated in people's ability to control identity change as they move through the life course.In their important and much discussed critique of American culture, Habits of the Heart (1984), Robert Bellah and his colleagues remark that American parents are of two minds about the prospect of their children leaving home. The thought that their children will leave is difficult, but perhaps more troublesome is the thought that they might not. In contrast to many cultures, American parents place great emphasis on their children establishing independence at a relatively early age. Still, as Bellah's wry comment suggests, they are deeply ambivalent about their children leaving home. The data presented in this paper, part of a larger project on family dynamics during the year that a child applies for admission to college, show that such ambivalence is shared by the children. Our goal here is to document some of the social psychological complexities of achieving independence in America by analyzing the perspectives of 23 primarily upper-middle-class high school seniors as they moved through the college application process and contemplated leaving home.'

The Interactive Relationship Between Class Identity and the College Experience: The Case of Lower Income Students

“…As students leave the family for college and are exposed to new beliefs, values, interests and life styles, relationships with friends and family often change and are renegotiated (Karp, Holstrom, and Gray 1998). But a particular set of problems arises for lower income students due to the identity changes entailed in accommodating to the middle class world of the academy.…”

Total Institutions and Reinvented Identities

“…Fraternity houses serve to initiate freshers, or new students, into the culture of an academic institution by providing them with a localised reference group, who are responsible for passing on the informal rules and norms of life within that setting. They form an institutional site through which members undergo a rite of passage, in order to reinvent themselves as students: this involves separating oneself from former ties to home towns, old friends and (to some extent) the family home, before cultivating a new student identity (Karp et al 1998). The chapter house provides a holding ground for individuals in the liminal period between these two phases (Turner 1967), when they are suspended between the two identities.…”

“…These institutions are predicated on a set of shared ambitions, oriented towards a future identity: students anticipate cultivating a new self, who is not only intellectually developed but radically transformed as a whole person. Going away to college represents an opportunity for self-discovery and self-actualisation, a chance to become 'who I want to be' (Karp et al 1998). At the same time, these RIs provide unique social environments, insular local worlds created by the interactions between students, staff and institutional arrangements.…”

Confucian or Communist, Post‐Mao or Postmodern? Exploring the Narrative Identity Resources of Shanghai's Post‐80s Generation

“…In the case of the Balinghou, immaturity could be one such unflattering definition. Labels applied by influential players in our lives can impact our self-fashioning (Karp et al, 1998). However, from the perspective of symbolic interactionism, the actor is in control of their reaction to the label, the manner by which he or she adopts it, and the extent to which it is incorporated into their conception of self (Herman-Kinney, 2003, p. 711).…”