Part I: Some rituals of passage that I think are important in U.S. life are going through puberty, graduating high school, going to college, getting married, having kids, and then retiring. For men and women, these rituals often look very different. For example, a woman may reach puberty at a younger age while a man may reach it at a later age. These rituals also may differ by culture, which can be shown by the average age that women get married in the U.S. and India. While they may slightly differ based on different personality factors, an average human will hit some a lot of these milestones within their lifetime.

Part II: Some rituals of passage that I have gone through include getting my period and graduating high school to start at college. Like most girls, I was dreading getting my period for the first time. However, even with the prospect of having cramps and hormones and having that uncomfortable conversation with my mom, to say I was relieved to get it was an understatement. As a three sport athlete, I was pretty skinny and small for my age. Therefore, my doctor wasn’t too worried when had reached 8^th grade and still hadn’t gotten my period. However, after two more years, they decided to send me to a specialist to see if I would ever end up getting one or at least growing past 5 feet tall. The specialist decided that everything seemed normal, but I just may never make it past 5’2. Finally, I hit a growth spurt in the summer between my sophomore and junior year and got my first period. I had even made it to a whole 5’6 by the end of my junior year. Honestly, because I was so old compared to most girls, getting it wasn’t terrifying or awkward. It was more of a comfort that my body didn’t have any complications and that I was just a late bloomer. Looking back at my experience, I am actually glad that I got to enjoy being a kid for a lot longer than most girls.

In terms of going to college, everything about going through these next steps in my life seemed so scary. I was terrified to leave my sheltered, little bubble in high school to go to one of the biggest universities in the country. I also remember feeling really confused. I was confused about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, about how I was going to find all my classes in such a big plot of land, and about who I wanted to be moving forward from high school. Moreover, I remember that at the time, these things felt like the most important worries in the world, but I have come to realize that there are more important things to care or stress about. Looking back at the moment, I would want to tell myself that everything was going to be okay and that the challenges that I faced as a freshman being so far away from home were going to seem so pointless in my sophomore year.

Part III: In week two’s Rituals and Rites of Passage video, we learned that rites of passages have three stages which include Separation, Liminality, and Incorporation, and that these three stages are supposed to make girls into women and boys into men. Moreover, we learned about the idea of belonging-liminality-belonging and how it defines how women and men are supposed to behave based on their gender. A big example of this that comes to mind in my college experience was how my experiences differed from my older brother’s. My parents were a lot more worried about me going to college on my own. They feared that I was too small to defend myself if I were to get into a bad situation. The entire car ride up to Michigan State, I was forced to listen to lectures about how late I should walk around campus or how I should always stick with a group of people. In contrast, when my brother was going up to college, he got to hear all about how much fun he was going to have in his next four years. It wasn’t fair that we were being treated differently because we were born different genders. Moreover, I also learned a lot about the way girls and guys were treated in the sorority rush process and the fraternity one through my brother. As a girl, you are supposed to look a certain way to be picked by one of the “best” sororities. You have to dress really nice and always have your hair and makeup done to impress the sisters. However, when my brother was rushing for his fraternity, he just had to be himself and hope that was enough for his brothers. It was so strange to me how two very similar experiences could be so different because of the standards in place for each gender.