Self-Authorship

Reflection #2 College was the time that I began to discover and explore my identities, beliefs, and the reasons why I held particular views. Theories and models of student development help illuminate how student affairs workers are able to understand, assist, and provide tools for students to discover their passions and live their most authentic lives. Throughout this essay, I will discuss the theory of self-authorship and the model of multiple dimensions of identity (MMDI), which I believe are two powerful concepts to help students discover themselves and allow student affairs workers to more deeply understand their students.
Self-Authorship
From the theorizing of Kegan (1994) and Baxter-Magolda (2008) came the concept of self-authorship, which Baxter-Magolda (2008) described as "the internal capacity to define one's beliefs, identity, and social relations" (as cited in Guido, Patton, Renn, & Quaye, 2016, p. 355). Over the course of the semester, self-authorship has been one of the concepts I found most useful for living an authentic life and providing benefits to future students.
Throughout my early years in school, I never
15). The MMDI observes the variability and salience of students' identities within different contexts. As future student affairs workers, we can use the MMDI to more profoundly understand our students and their experiences within higher education. The MMDI will help one to understand the flexibility of students' identity saliences regarding their context. In addition, one must also remember that although we may not always be able to physically see salient identities, they affect how our students make meaning of themselves in their