Identity Timeline

Identity Timeline

Student

Programmer

Introvert

Musician

Dylan Haigler

Movie Lover

Actor

Activist

Son

Introduction

Conclusion

Elementary School

College

Middle School

High School

In sixth grade, I had stopped taking guitar lessons and therefore briefly did not play music at all until I joined band the next year. I did briefly take an "intro to music" class as part of an exploratory elective cycle, but it was fairly surface-level and did not do much to develop my identity as a musician.

Conclusion

At the right of this graph lie my predictions for the future. I debated whether or not to include that portion - the universe has a way of proving those sorts of things wrong. But I ultimately chose to include my estimates of the directions my various identities will take in the future because even if they are ultimately proven incorrect, my predictions for the future still provide important insight about my identities in the present.

In completing this graph, I have come to a greater understanding of my own identity and how different aspects of my self have evolved over the years. Being a musician was a very high-precedence identity for me through middle and high school but is now reduced to a pastime I sometimes engage with in my free time. Being a programmer was introduced to me in late elementary school, fell by the wayside in early high school, and is now my main course of study and likely my future career. Being an introvert has been a constant throughout most of my life, but I often try to act against my introverted nature in order to fulfill my social needs. Being a student has been part of my life since I was a toddler, and has increased over the years as my classes have gotten more difficult and more personalized. Being a son will always be important to me, but has recently decreased its significance in my life as I have started living in a dorm, away from my parents. Being an actor was an identity of mine for a very brief period, and is now not part of my life at all. Being a movie lover has recently become more important to me as I improve my ability to critically analyze films. Finally, being an activist was introduced to me via the nasty politics of the 2016 election, but has recently increased its significance in my life as I have found an organization of peers who care about the same political and social issues that I do.

At the end of the day, I am all of these identities and I am none of them. I am all of them because each of these identities is an essential part of me and I would be a completely different person if one of them was removed. And I am none of them because none of the complex, inscrutable human beings that walk this earth can be fully understood in just a few descriptive words. But hopefully, I have chosen the right words so that you, the viewer of this project, can understand who I am just a little bit. I am a musician. I am a programmer. I am an introvert. I am a student. I am a son. I was an actor. I am a movie lover. I am an activist. I am Dylan.

At UAB, my identity as a student peaked as I was finally able to nearly exclusively study what I wanted. There were, of course, some classes that I was required to take, such as English composition and, of course, public speaking, but I generally had the ability to mostly take courses that related to my interest in and future career of computer science, which caused me to be invested in my studies much more than in grade school, when my school day was ruled by the required core classes. Additionally, living on campus causes me to think of myself as more of a full-time student, as opposed to grade school, where there was a much clearer separation between school and home.

Me and Blaze!

In college, I stepped back from music, instead focusing on my major, computer science. I participated in only the concert and jazz bands, a far less demanding time commitment than I had in high school. I started playing the piano again, which I hadn't done since just before high school. The enjoyment I experienced from relearning the piano and spending some of my free time practicing ensured that while being a musician had decreased its significance in my life, it would long remain an essential part of my identity. However, music was now more of a side activity, no longer the most significant aspect of my identity.

I expect my role as a son to level out in the future. My relationship with my parents will always be important to me, but the responsibilities of my own life now take precedence over that. Still, I will always try to be sure to make time for my duties as a son and spend time with my parents often.

In college, now that I'm living on campus during the school year, my role as a son takes on even less precedence in my life. I still live with my parents over breaks and sometimes visit them during the school year, but I am gaining an increasing amount of independence from my parents by spending the majority of my time living away from them at UAB.

I have recently made the difficult decision to quit the UAB band program - I want to be able to focus on my computer science major more as my academic classes increase in difficulty. I am not quitting music outright, however - I will continue playing the piano and working to improve my skill at it. However, playing music is now more of a hobby for me - being a musician is still important to me and is an essential part of my life, but music is no longer the principal aspect of my identity.

During late elementary school, I took guitar lessons and participated in a rock band camp. Although my time playing the guitar was somewhat brief, it was where I really gained an independent interest in music. My guitar teacher, Erath Old, was a positive influence on my music-playing abilities, teaching me the basics of playing the guitar that would later lead me to pursue other instruments.

When I was a very young child, being a son was all I had to be and was therefore the most significant aspect of my identity for my first few years in this world. I had no other responsibilities or duties - just being taken care of by my parents. I didn't know how good I had it! (I kid, I kid).

In my senior year of high school, I took an introductory Python course, which got me more actively interested in programming again. Learning computer science in a structured class instead of some online course made me realize that I was skilled at and invested in learning programming and that computer science was what I wanted to do with my life.

As I began high school, music rapidly increased its relevance in my life. My summers were filled with band camp, and there was band practice nearly every day after school during football season. During the springs, I was focused on the concert side of the band program. My social life continued to be tied to band, as most of my friends were fellow "band kids".

Me playing in the stands at a football game during my COVID-ridden sophomore year of high school

Throughout my entire childhood, I often watched movies with my family for fun. I enjoyed watching movies, but it wasn't a major part of my identity - it was more of a way to occupy time every so often.

Introduction

The following is a graph of how several aspects of my identity have evolved throughout the different stages of my life. These parts of myself include my identity as a musician, a programmer, an introvert, a student, a son, an actor, a movie lover, and an activist. Each of these aspects of my self has increased and decreased its significance in my life over the years and different identities have had the greatest precedence in my life in different time periods. Completing this project required a significant amount of thought and self-reflection in order to honestly portray the evolution of my self.

Click on the information symbols that go along each line of the graph to read about how each of my identities has evolved.

My junior and senior years of high school were my peak music years. I got more involved in band than ever, joining jazz band and competition band in addition to football band and concert band. I improved my trumpet-playing skills significantly, consistently making the top ensembles. A large portion of my free time was regularly taken up by band. I also took an AP Music Theory class to learn more about the academic, theoretical side of music. Being a musician was one of my primary identities during this period.

Me performing as part of the First Edition jazz band at my high school.

During seventh and eighth grade, I played trumpet in the middle school band. This is where music really started to become an essential part of my identity, as band took up a larger portion of my day-to-day life as well as my social life - I had met my main friend group at that time through band. I also briefly took piano lessons during this period, but temporarily stopped playing the piano in order to focus on beginning high school.

In the future, while I am relatively sure that I will always be an introvert, I will also do my best to continue to overcome my shyness in order to fulfill my social needs. I will continue to make friends through the classes and organizations I am a part of. However, for better of for worse, my habit of spending most of my free time on non-social activities is likely to persist.

In college, I joined UAB's Film Club, becoming part of a small community of fellow movie lovers on campus. This organization introduced me to several great movies, including Sorry to Bother You, About Time, and Birdman. Watching and discussing movies with this organization contributed to my continuously developing skills of film analysis and criticism.

An Instagram post advertising a Film Club screening.

Throughout elementary school, I had an extracurricular music class every week, which is where I was first introduced to basic-level music skills like reading rhythms, singing songs, and playing the xylophone and recorder. I particularly enjoyed the latter portion of the class - it may have been what sparked my interest in instrumental music.

In high school, as I started watching more movies "for adults", I began to gain a greater appreciation for film as an art form, not just an entertaining way to fill time. I created a Letterboxd account (an app for logging and reviewing movies) and started rating and reviewing the movies I watched, gaining a greater appreciation for the movies by thinking more critically about them. Each of the movies I have listed as my "favorites" on my Letterboxd profile (Everything Everywhere All at Once, Memento, Whiplash, and Past Lives) is a movie that had a major effect on me and increased my enjoyment of the medium of film.

A screenshot of my Letterboxd profile.

In early middle school, I took a brief interest in acting. I took an acting class with other kids my age. I was in two plays as part of that class - "The Long View", where I played Travis the high school bully, and an adaptation of "Alice in Wonderland", where I played the Mad Hatter. I enjoyed my brief time on stage, but after a year of that class, I decided not to further pursue acting. Acting is the only aspect of my identity portrayed in this graph that I expect to play no role in my life moving forward. I am glad I ultimately chose to focus on other interests, but sometimes wonder how my life would have been different had I continued to pursue acting.

In high school, I mostly stopped using Scratch - I had outgrown its target audience. I had done a few online coding courses for fun, but didn't really take to them. At this point, being a programmer was not a major part of my life, but it was still often in the back of my mind as a potential future career.

In middle school, I became more invested in my identity as a student as the difficulty of my coursework increased and I began to have some level of control over what classes I took - I was able to choose to take the advanced math class and the band and Spanish electives. The increased difficulty and customizability of my middle school classes gave me a greater drive to learn, increasing the impact that being a student had on my identity.

I expect my identity as an activist to increase in the future as I gain more knowledge of political and social issues. I plan to continue participating in YDSA meetings and demonstrations and become a larger part of the organization's community, growing my identity as an activist.

The increasing prevalence of being a student in my identity continued in high school, where the coursework became a lot more difficult and I had some control over nearly every class I took. I chose to really put my nose to the grindstone by taking several AP classes, sacrificing my free time for my studies. I was also able to take elective courses that aligned with my interests, including Music Theory and Computer Science Principles. Through taking more difficult and personalized classes, the significance of my identity as a student increased.

My introverted nature has been a fairly consistent part of my identity for most of my life. As early as elementary school, I was a fairly self-conscious and shy person. In elementary school, I wasn't quite as introverted as I would become, but still was not the type to make myself the center of attention. I typically made friends via my classmates talking to me first.

I first gained an interest in politics during the extremely contentious 2016 election. While I was put off by much of the vitriolic discourse surrounding the election, I was intrigued by many of the political issues that surrounded it. I would continue to simultaneously be interested in political and social issues and repelled by the increasingly nasty state of the American political system throughout middle and high school.

As I moved through elementary, middle, and high school, my role as a son gradually decreased as other aspects of my identity took on more precedence. Of course, I still regularly spent time with my parents whenever I was at home or we were on a family vacation, but an increasing amount of my time was taken up by other responsibilities and interests such as being a student and a musician.

I foresee programming becoming an even larger part of my identity in the future, as I take more and more advanced computer science classes at UAB and eventually more into a programming-related career. If and when I have a programming career, being a programmer will likely be my primary identity, as my career will be the aspect of my life that takes up the majority of my time and energy.

As an elementary schooler, being a student was a small, yet gradually increasing part of my identity. Due to the easy school work and my lack of control over what I studied, as well as being at the point in my education where I didn't know how anything I was learning would apply to my life, being a student wasn't very important to me during elementary school. I still completed all of my schoolwork and got good grades, but likely wouldn't have gone to school if my parents hadn't made me!

In college, I chose to major in computer science due to my positive reaction to the introductory Python course that I took in high school. As I started taking college-level computer science classes, I grew to enjoy programming even more. Gaining more of a knowledge of computer science principles gave me a greater drive to learn all I can about programming.

A screenshot of a coffee shop application I created for my object-oriented programming course at UAB.

For the rest of my college years, my identity as a student will retain its prominence. I will continue to study computer science and work to learn as much as I can about the field. After that, my identity as a student will decrease as I move from college to a career. However, it will never fully disappear because I will always need to be keeping up with the latest computer science knowledge. I will no longer be a student in the literal sense, but I will constantly be learning for the duration of my career.

In college, I decided to join a political organization, UAB's YDSA (Young Democratic Socialists of America). This organization has a mission of political activism and social justice that interested me. I have gone to a few meetings and one demonstration (a protest against SB-129, the new anti-DEI bill. ) held by this organization. Participating in YDSA and becoming part of a community of fellow political and social activists grew my interest in politics and social issues and increased the precedence of my identity as an activist.

Someone at Kaleidoscope, UAB's student newspaper, captured this picture of me and my sign at the anti-SB-129 demonstration!

In college, I have become slightly less introverted, partly due to necessity - most of the familiar faces I grew up with in elementary, middle, and high school are elsewhere. I force myself into self-presentation - starting conversations with people and speaking up more in order to make friends. By doing this, I have made several friends through my classes and organizations (Film Club and YDSA). However, I am still content to be an introvert, spending most of my free time on my hobbies (playing music and watching movies/TV) and not often going out and socializing.

During my teenage years, I naturally became more self-conscious and introverted. I was able to make friends with people, but only after coexisting with them for a long time through a class or extracurricular activity. I made most of my friends through the middle and high school band program. I would not socialize a lot outside of school activities, but I was ultimately at peace with this. As an introvert, I was content to spend my free time relaxing at home.

In my fourth grade enrichment class, I was introduced to a block-based programming language called Scratch. I immediately took to it, making lots of small games and animations for fun in my free time throughout late elementary school and middle school. In addition to being a programming tool, Scratch was also sort of like a child-friendly social media platform - users could publish their projects and view and comment on other users' projects. The social aspect of Scratch further fostered my identity as a programmer by providing me with an online community of fellow young coders.

A screenshot of Ninja Quest, one of the Scratch games I created in elementary school.

I expect my identity as a movie lover to continue to develop as I continue to develop my appreciation for film as an art form by discussing movies with UAB's Film Club, which will continue to provide me with a community of fellow movie lovers. I will also keep independently reviewing films on Letterboxd in order to encourage myself to think more deeply about the movies I watch.