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Welcome to Mahyar's Identity Padlet! In my Social Studies class, our first unit of study is on "identity" and how we have been creating our own Identity Portfolios. Over the past 5 weeks, we have explored different parts of who we are. In this Padlet, you will find my responses to 3 questions. Who am I? Who are what i want to represent? and Who will i become?

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I’m Mahyar Mohajeri. A 14-year-old Persian student, son, brother, and friend born in Shiraz, Iran with two parents on September 17, 2005. I have spent my whole life, from the age of 2 to now, trying to answer the question “Who am I?” for myself. Because at the age of 2 me, my sister, and my parents fled my home country, Iran, due to my father having major political issues. We moved to a neighboring country called Azerbaijan. People of this nationality hated Persians because Azerbaijan was a part of Iran until 1991 when it got its independence. Since then they have viewed us as the enemy and unfortunately, me and my family were stuck in this country for 5 horrific years. During these 5 years, my family made some mistakes which was a slippery slope and we hit rock bottom. We lost everything, except for ourselves. No matter how hard the times were, we always stayed together, and I believe that’s why we survived, and others didn’t. Since my family was different, everyone was against us. People there did not want us to get out of Azerbaijan. Despite all this hatred, we survived and were able to come to America.  As a child, I spent the last 12 years trying to figure out why my family was different than the rest. Out of all these years of searching, in total, I have found that we are a clever family with a lot of energy and with a will to live, but the only fact that mattered to them was that we weren’t Azerbaijanian, we were Iranian. But the deeper I searched, the more I found out. From that point on I have discovered ways to use my cleverness and energy. I put my energy into sports, specifically martial arts. I have grown to love martial arts, which is now a large part of who I am and realized I can use my intelligence, in the future, to help people get out of the situation that I was so lucky to get out with only my family next to me. With these experiences under my belt, I can be successful at anything I try.

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Question 2: Who or What do I Represent? 

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Question 2: Who or What do I Represent? 

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I want to be a representation of a colored, male, specifically Persian, that thrives to be the best version of themselves without a care of social norms. My goal is to represent a Persian with deep values including family and knowledge, unlike the current stereotypes which couldn’t be further from the truth. In my 7 years of being in America, I have joined many groups, came out of old, not useful groups, and connected more with other groups. When we came to America, due to the reason that we came into a new and strange land, my family grew even closer together because we were all we had. After a year or 2, as we grew more and more familiar, we started branching out and joining different communities. Most recently, I became a part of a vast community of Zoroastrian Persians in the Seattle area with the same believes as me. Because I got more into my own culture, when I joined this community, I do my best to visually and verbally represent and become the best version of myself and Persians in total. For example, when I dress myself in the morning, I always think about who I will be meeting. If I’m not planning on meeting any new person, I still dress my best for the occasion, but I don’t put a lot of effort into it. If I will be meeting new people, I especially dress my best to make sure that my first impression is the best it could be because if it is not, they will already dislike me even before I talk or do anything else. I verbally represent myself by making sure I am talking in a formal tone and language when I’m talking to elders or I’m meeting a person for the first time because I truly believe that first impressions can go a long way and if my first impression isn’t the best it could be, the person I'm interacting with might be tempted to believe the stereotype of people like me.

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Question 2: Who or What do I Represent? 

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Question 2: Who or What do I Represent? 

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I’m a firm believer in to have a good future you need to prepare for it today. Believing in this I do my best to set myself on the right track for the goals that I have and want to reach in the future. And if everything goes to plan, in 10 or so years I will have reached my goals and possibly made new ones to keep myself growing.  Within the next 10 years I will hopefully have a bachelor's in political science and business, gone to and finished law school. By then I will be 25 or so years old. In 10+ years I believe I will become an immigration lawyer working for UN in a US embassy, or I will be a diplomatic lawyer in Iran, if a revolution happens and the current government is replaced by the original, Shah (king), or a corporate lawyer somewhere in the US, but defiantly somewhere in law. Where I’m living is a depending factor on which vocation I have and where my family are located. Whatever job I have I want to be close to my family. And hopefully by then my family will have extended to my current family plus a significant other (wife, fiancé, or girlfriend). Following all these events, hopefully I have grown as an individual as in maturity, but my values will probably stay the same.