In the August before my sophomore year of high school, a challenge emerged. My dad had passed away. Of course you would read that and automatically think about how that would affect me in many ways. However no one, not even myself, was aware of the many challenges that went with this.…
I’m happy with who I am today, just as everyone should be. But if I could change anything about myself, I’d want to have more motivation to do things. In the mornings before school I can barely get out of bed because I’m so tired and don’t want to go to school. I’m exceedingly intelligent but I don’t have any drive. I procrastinate on most of my work, and sometimes I just don’t want to do the work. Right now I’m rank 14 in my class but I could’ve been higher if I had any drive my freshman year. I don’t think about how my decisions now will impact me later and when I do, I don’t really care. I also don’t have much motivation to do things in sports activities. Last year I played volleyball and I never had that much playing time. Never being able…
My cultural background is Native American, Scottish, Irish, and Canadian; I have been taught a lot about our cultural background throughout my life. I have also been lucky in the area I grew up. I grew up in a very culturally diverse area. Many of my friends from elementary school through high school were from many different cultures. I grew up eating food at friends house that to this day I still cant pronounce.…
My political viewpoint has changed dramatically since I was first introduced to politics. I come from a democratic family, where it is strongly believed that it is the government’s responsibility to care for all people and that the government knows what is best for all people. Every voting season, my parents vote for a democratic president and explain to me the reasoning behind their decision. It was not until I was in the tenth grade that I realized that I did not hold the same political beliefs as my parents. After taking several political quizzes and extensively researching the bevy of political parties, I now know that I am an independent. What is an independent? An independent is an individual politician not affiliated to any political…
“Wow! I did not know there were black Americans”. During the month I was in China, I heard this or a variant of it jokily said to me numerous times. I never took offense to it since I understood most of the media from America that came to China featured individuals who did not look like me. Furthermore, for those Americans who had come to China, they were mostly white and had come for business. While in China, I was able to share my experience as an African-American; I always found enjoyment sharing my experiences and it seemed to me those around me found enjoyment learning about a different side of America. With me sharing my experiences, they were being able to understand the diverse nature of the United States.…
I have been a global student throughout my life. I have done my schooling in countries such as Oman, Qatar, Dubai and Canada. In all of these countries, I got to learn about their diverse cultures from my peers. I learned to be considerate to the cultural ideals and religious beliefs of others. My overseas experiences gave me a better understanding of diversity in order to recognize common humanity.…
To many in America, I am diversity. I represent a minority group, I am the exotic elephant in the room, and I am who companies include to up their diversity intake. My culture is the outline for my entire life; while it doesn't define me, it has changed and impacted my life is different ways. Diversity is the basis of all communities, and tolerance is a result of educating oneself on this topic. A group may be diverse in nature, but if not tolerant, they are not succeeding in being diverse in action. My life as an Indian-American student in a upper-middle class neighborhood may not seem to give much insight on diversity, but my experience has not been stereotypical. From an early age, my parents surrounded our family with Indians. It was not…
“You is smart. You is beautiful. You is strong.” For a couple of years my mom would playfully cite to me her version of the famous lines from the movie “The Help” in hopes that it would inspire me as an African American woman. At the time I was nearly 10 and frankly I brushed off every word my mom said because I looked around me and didn’t feel comfortable in my own skin. It took me sometime to realize that my mother’s words would forever stay with me and empower me. Especially when I met adversaries that would try to make me feel small for who I am.…
I am Ethiopian. Being Ethiopian has taught me to love the people around me, respect everything I have and also become the level header person I am today. My culture has built the backbone of our family and has kept us together through all odds. My mother and father keep the culture alive by speaking the official language of Amharic in the house, cooking traditional food and also practicing our Orthodox religion. Being Ethiopian is a huge part of who I am, but at one point in my life it seemed like that was the one thing I wanted no one to know about.…
Identity and personality are what makes each individual unique. Everyone has experimented different life periods which come with different life experience. Self-identity develops who we are and how we are shaped into the person we are today. In my 16 years I have learned life lessons that come from past experience and that have influence on me in many different ways.…
My story beings like any other, at the moment I took my first breath on July 30th 1998 in Bilisht, Albania. I was born in a small town in the lower region of Albania where my entire family lived with my grandparents under one household. My parents soon came to the realization that the current living situation was incongruous for a new family, such as ours, to thrive. As the result, my parents chose to apply for the government program granting our family access to move into a completely new society with new laws, regulations, political aspects and that was tens of thousands of miles away. Our family, at that instant, had a struck of luck as my mother’s name was drawn for us to move to the greatest country the United States of America.…
Culture is an important and vital component that defines who and what we are as a person. We interface with cultural difference on a daily basis. So what exactly is culture? Good Question! I will attempt to identify my own cultural and explain what cultural means to me. So, lets start by defining the term culture. “Culture is a particular society that has its own beliefs, ways of life, art, etc.”. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2015) My cultural identity consists of several parts. I am most foremost a female that has a variety of racial genetic makeup of African-American, Native American, and European descent. I was raised in a Christian religious household and in a primarily single parent home. I have a sister and a half brother on my father’s…
America. Land of the free and home of the brave. A place that be full of individualism and diversity. Even though this is a great nation, there is a few things I would change to make this country even better. America is occupied of people that don’t truly know what is going on in the world, their homeland, even what is going on in their own state. This is a result of news censoring or even changing stories to sway the viewers opinions. Also news are mostly opinions instead of facts, making it so no one will have the full story of the events that are occurring…
Personal background starts off small, it changes and grows over time into something big, it grows into an identity. Walking down the hallway at school, seeing someone standing alone, my first instinct is to make conversation, compliment, or even just smile at him or her. This instinct came from someone once telling me an act so small could turn a person's entire life around. As a kid, reading encyclopedias about random topics, consumed my time. Many days were spent coming home to find an injured wild animal in my dad's arms waiting to be saved. My dad would sit outside and draw animals, trees, and anything else he saw. Nothing excited me more than trying to draw whatever my dad drew, and as good as he did. Any assignment that was handed to…
Growing up with divorced parents from two radically different cultures was at first difficult. My mother’s family was from Peru, while my father’s was from Bangladesh. In my young mind, there was an internal struggle with what my identity actually consisted of. I wasn’t wholly from one culture or the other, and felt like a black sheep when interacting with either side of my family. Due to this, I attempted to keep these cultures partitioned. At the time, they were different portions of my life that simply couldn’t intermix. This mentality in turn led me to foolishly shy away from my joint heritage. I kept myself enclosed in a box, blind to the beauty of my surrounding culture. However, as time progressed, I knew I had to make a change in my understanding.…