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Sarah Garrett Rebecca Agosta ENG-1102 November 4, 2013 Investigating the Identity of Military Wives I have a very special person in my life who is a military wife. My best friend of 8 years is married to an amazing man in the U.S. Navy. I have known Angel since middle school, and we have been best friends since our freshman year in high school. When we met we instantly got along because we were both very friendly, easy going girls. All through high school we stuck together even though many of our other friends ended up going separate ways. About a year after we graduated high school Angels boyfriend decided he wanted to join the navy. At first she had wanted to end things with him because she wasnt sure she could be with someone who would be away for long periods of time. Good starting story but possibly make a bit more concise I ended up realizing I still want to be with him even though it made me feel like he was leaving me for the navy (Angel). Angel and Pablo got married about 6 months after he completed boot camp. Once they were married that meant she would move to wherever he was stationed. Angel had to pack up all of her life she had spent in Charlotte and move to a small town in Mississippi none of us had ever heard of. During Angel and Pablos first year of being married they only got to spend 4 months on the same continent. Angel and I have been friends through a lot of hard times, and a lot of good times. In the past 3 years Angel and Pablo have been married I have seen her grow into such a strong, independent, and amazing person. Since Ive been able to witness firsthand many of the changes she has gone through, this made me want to take a deeper look into how

other military wives are shaped by this experience. I really enjoyed the opening story that was included in the text. As we looked today in class you definitely used a great technique to catch the reader. As I have watched Angel through the years Ive seen how the military has become a huge part of her identity, even though she herself is not an actual member of the military. Many of the questions I had were about if other military wives absorb the identity of the military, how exactly the military impacts their marriage and them as an individual, as well as the overall effects of being a military wife, both good and bad. Possibly expand on this last bit of the intro a bit. I agree with Kyle, I liked the questions that you want to examine in your research but you could possibly breaks these questions down into sub-groups which would allow you not only to explain more behind it but could help if length in the paper became a problem. Methods

For this research project I used several different research methods. One of the biggest resources for me was my own experience with Angel. In the years Ive known her Ive usually been the one she vents her problems and frustrations to, so Ive been able to see firsthand how her experiences have shaped her, as well as how she has dealt with the different hurtles that military wives face. I conducted an interview with Angel to get her raw thoughts on all of my questions. Angel has been married to Pablo for almost 3 years; Pablo is a member of the U.S. Navy. There was a lot of secondary research I completed which was very interesting because almost everything I read was right in line with my personal experiences through Angel. I completed my search for scholarly articles in the Universitys library. Possibly name one or two of the scholarly sources just to add credibility to them before they are brought up later in the paper There are many scholarly articles, and studies written about military wives I realized there was a lot of research that backed up my personal experiences with Angel. I interviewed Angel on

the phone for about 1 hour, getting her opinions and responses to my research questions. I saw a post on Facebook about military wives and I found Ashleighs blog. Ashleigh is a mother of 3 boys, and a wife to a U.S. Marine (Ashleigh, On Happily Ever Afters). There were also a lot of images I found on Pinterest dealing with military wives. For all of my research I used a lot of Gees insights about identity. Gee writes about different aspects of identity, the pertinent ones to my topic being discourse identity, affinity identity, and institutional identity. Institutional identity is a position that is given to you by an institution of power (Gee, 102). The institution gives a way to define a person by the role they fill. Discourse identity is given to a person by other rational people(Gee, 103). For any reason people can assign certain roles and characteristics to a person that then becomes a part of their identity (Gee, 104). Affinity identity is given by a distinct set of practices and common interests. Throughout this paragraph you have numerous extremely short sentences, try to string some of these together to make it a little less choppy

Necessities for Life Satisfaction The life satisfaction of military wives has been found to be tied to the militarys retention of their servicemen (Klein 465). Possibly add a brief intro to this paragraph to explain why this scholarly source I relevant and to give some background before it is brought in

Works Cited Angel, Personal Interview, 28 Oct. 2013 Baker, Ashleigh. "This Is to You, the Military Wife." Ashleigh Baker. Ashleigh Baker, 12 Nov. 2012. Web. 10 Oct. 2013. Davis, Jennifer, David B. Ward, and Cheryl Storm. "The Unsilencing of Military Wives: Wartime Deployment Experiences and Citizen Responsibility." Journal of Marital and Family Therapy 37.1 (2011): 51-63. Gee, James Paul. "Identity as an Analytic Lens for Research in Education." Review of Research in Education 25 (2000): 99-125. Print. Klein, HA, CL Tatone, and NB Lindsay. "Correlates of Life Satisfaction Among Military Wives." The Journal of Psychology. 123.5 (1989): 465-75. Print.