The Nature of Human Values
My Chi Omega Family
My Biological Family
Objectives:
• Understand that values are formed from external and internal drives of an individual
• Explore one’s own value system
Original Post:
1. Family
2. Friendship
3. Loyalty
4. Integrity
5. Enjoyment
6. Independence
7. Wisdom
8. Leadership
9. Health
10. Personal Development
11. Personal Accomplishment
12. Security
13. Community
14. Wealth
15. Service
16. Prestige
17. Expertness
18. Power
19. Creativity
20. Location
My activities today have been on the boring side considering I was on a road trip. However, I always carry my values with me and I certainly did activities to show that. I spent all weekend with my best friends and sorority sisters. I spent a great deal of time with them and I always continue to build stronger relationships with them. Unfortunately, I did not get to spend time with my family this weekend but I do always keep in constant contact with them. They are the first on my list because even if I have nothing at all, I can always count on my parents and sister. They mean the absolute world to me and my future kids and husband will also be my number one priority in life. My third value is loyalty. Loyalty is incredibly important to me because I have had too many experiences with people who are not loyal to me and continue to let me down. My true friends are the ones that value the quality of loyalty as much as I do. Integrity is my next value because if we are not happy with ourselves and our actions, then it does not really matter what else we do have. It is crucial that we hold ourselves to high standards. I chose enjoyment as my fifth most important value because if we do not enjoy what we are doing, then it has little purpose. Being content with our life-track is incredibly important. This weekend, I had so much fun and would not change one thing about hanging out with my friends and watching Oregon beat The Huskies.
I have adopted many of these values from my parents. They hold a lot of these values in importance as I have. I am still working on a few values on this list. Personal Development and wealth are values that I will continue to work towards as I am almost done with college and about to start a career. I believe that a great amount of these values do not completely manifest until we are older and have experienced more in life. However, they are all extremely important and none can be ignored. I would like to get more involved in the community. As a requirement at my sorority, I do participate in some community service, but definitely not as much as I would like. When I get settled in a career, I hope that I am able to work more for the less fortunate and give back to the community in that way.
Reflection:
For this assignment we were asked to look at a list of values and order them in importance to our lives. Because I went to Catholic school, I often had to write about my values and how I think I adopted them. This assignment was particularly interesting because I had never really taken a list and picked the most important values. Values that I thought would definitely be in everyone’s top five turned out to be at the bottom of others’. This proves that our values are unique to our upbringing and the people that are in our lives. I believe that this assignment helped achieve the last objective of this unit, “explore one’s own value system.” I know that most of my values are adopted from my parents, my friends, my sorority, and my religious education. Many people cannot relate to being in a Greek organization and the values that are instilled because of it. I enjoyed the opportunity to think about how this has affected my everyday decisions.
When examining my own values, I decided that a great deal of mine are from my own personality and the personalities of my parents. Our article stated, “The proposition that individual human beings are programmed into their values, either by the influence of genes or personality or by social pressures, can neither be proven nor refuted” (8). Even though this quote says that there is no definite answer, I do think that these influences impact which values are important to us and which are not as crucial. This reading also helped us meet the objective to understand where our values come from.
Future:
In the future, I hope to keep my values intact and live through them everyday. As I get older, I know that I will keep my friends and family at the top of my list in order of importance. One day I will have my own family and I am sure that values that I hold close to my heart will also be close to my children as they grow up. I also hope to take the friendships that I have made and the lessons that I have learned from being in a sorority and implement them into my own life and the lives of my children. My favorite line from the Chi Omega symphony is “To be womanly always, to be discouraged never.” These important values will stay with me forever.