What is your experience of developing and maintaining a consistent social/personal identity?

[Anna]

I'm writing a paper for my psychology class about social and personal identities. It would be helpful if you could answer these questions:
What ethnic group do you identify with? Why?
Do you know your social identity? When did the learning process start?
When did you come to the realization that you were a specific gender(male/female)? How did you realize this?
Your level of happiness.
How do you keep your social and personal identity constant?

Personal stories would me greatly appreciated! Also, please leave your age as well. Thank you!

[BILL]

White, Anglo-Saxon
Educated, middle class, American.
When a child. By others referring to me as male at first.
medium-high.
By not worrying about it. My identity has pretty-much always been there. It's not something I have to maintain, create or discover.
68
At age 21 I became aware of the fact that I could think for myself, quite abruptly.