Personal identity and civic responsibility: "Rising to the occasion" narratives and generativity in community action student interns

Twenty-two students in a community action certificate program supplied "rising to the occasion" narratives during summer-long internships. They also filled out measures of generativity. Twenty-one students in an international studies certificate program that also included a summer internship served as a comparison group. Both groups reported equal personal growth from rising to the occasion experiences and no differences on measures of optimism, self-esteem or generativity. However, the community action students linked their personal growth experiences to future community service; a regression analysis also revealed that the best predictor of their stress-related growth was their level of generative concern. No comparable links emerged for the comparison group. Implications for cultivating connections between personal identity and civic responsibility through service-learning are discussed.