My greatest influences are my parents and my brother. My brother suffered from Guillain- Barre Syndrome when he was eight. He lived in the hospital on an artificial ventilation for 97 days and later he had to continue physical therapy for at least ten years as he was completely paralyzed. My parents and my brother devoted their few years completely for his treatment. Today, my brother is a successful engineer working in the bay area. I learned that with dedication, determination and diligence we can achieve our dream in life…
That’s interesting you’ve mentioned not to attend the hospital and funeral for your grandmother. In my African American/Indian culture if a woman is pregnant she’s prohibited to attend anywhere the death angel may currently be around, and funerals are definitely off limits. My family used to say when a life is taken a new life is born and I don’t know if the pregnant thing was an old superstation by forbidden spirit in my family as well because they believed the death angel comes to take a life in three; therefore it permits the baby a chance at life. Nowadays, there’s wills and other things in place to carry out a person’s wishes. I believe she told you because she knew she could trust you to carry out her last wishes amongst the family accordingly.…
I dislike being asked “Where are you from?” because I do not consider myself from any specific place. I have moved around several times as a child, which has given me the opportunity to meet different kinds of people each from distinct walks of life. Being faced with the challenge of meeting new people has taught how to come out of my comfort zone at any given moment. The experiences I have had in life has caused me to become an outgoing, hardworking, and very multicultural person.…
Throughout my seventeen years, I have met and dealt with various groups of people with diverse ethnic backgrounds from school or through my volunteer activities. However, nothing prepared me for my summer job at the new local Walmart store. The first day of my first paying job was also the grand opening day for Walmart at the Dulles Landing store. I have met countless employees and customers with so many different backgrounds and cultures, who communicate with each other in so many different languages. The whole atmosphere at the Walmart store feels like I am in the middle of the busy World Market. There are countless demanding and exasperated customers that I deal with each day at the customer service counter. Through this experience,…
I used to gag at the thought of running eight hundred meters. There I stood with my heart racing, ready to run five kilometers. To everyone else, this was an unimportant meet that even the coach said he did not care about. It was for me, however, more terrifying than losing my mom in the grocery store when I was a child. My first meet and all I could think of was my speed or lack thereof. I did not have distance spikes. I did not have a muscle roller. All I had was my heart in my throat paired with running shoes. Since the day before, my blood pressure had been rising and continued to do so.…
Part I: In some ways I guess you could say I am not very cultured, in that sense there is not a wide variety of cultural influences around me. With that being said, my family still has a large assortment of different traditions we do from decorating the tree at Christmas to going up to my grandparents house for Thanksgiving and making the same dishes every year. The area I live in is just not very diverse, it never has been. I live in Alpharetta, Georgia where the majority is white people and somewhat upper class. I consider my family to be middle class but more on the upper side. We live in a nice house in a safe neighborhood near very good schools. I went to the same high school for three years before a new…
I am proud to say, "I am a perfect blend of sweet and salty." My ethnic background consists of two; My dad being Salvadorian and my mom is Mexican, making me and my siblings quite the concoction of Hispanic blood. You would think because we are all in the Hispanic category our lives wouldn't be difficult since we speak Spanish, have the same characteristics, and usually, family traditions are or should be quite similar. Not completely, in this case, I recently found out that it isn't common for Salvadorians and Mexicans to get along because they both are just as proud and tough. In specifics, my mom always has given me the warm side of caring for others, being family oriented is important and giving is always better than receiving. My dad, on the other hand, was very dry in emotion he…
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…
The advice that was given to me about writing my personal statement is that whatever I wrote, it must be a statement that came directly from the heart. I’ve found that in order to do this, I must actually write about my heart. When I was born, doctors discovered that I had a ventricular septal defect. The defect needed to be repaired, or I would have been wheelchair-bound and not lived past my fifth birthday. The experience of my heart surgery was not only life-altering for me, but for my parents as well. I was their first-born child, and they had just purchased their first home. It is hard enough to learn the ropes of becoming a parent - but to be the parents to a very ill child was something they had never prepared for. They always…
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.…
My first home for many years. This land comes rarer to me as the day…
Football has always been a big part of my life. As a young boy I would day dream of making insane touchdowns, making tackles that would leave man stuck in the ground, and even winning the heisman trophy. In 7th grade I had begged my mother endlessly to sign me up for pee wee football because she would always worry about the risks of football. After finally getting her to sign me up, we went straight into the season. I chose to play running back because as a 12-year-old I was remarkably fast having timed 5.3 in the 40 yard-dash. After a few weeks in the season we approached the playoffs and found out our opponent for the first round of the playoffs were the jaguars who were undefeated. Our team didn’t have the best chemistry on…
My Asian culture has been extremely dear to me in my heart almost all my life. Not only am I bound to it by tradition, but I feel a strong connection to it. Ever since I was young whenever my grandma decided to visit us in America, she would always tell us to stay proud of our culture and to never forget our roots. Ever since her death, I took her words to heart and was fortunate to have found a great Asian community at the university that I came to adore. This community offers a safe, welcoming environment for Asian-Americans to express their cultures and not be judged. Looking back at a specific time in my life last year when I was on the verge of all of my schoolwork, and extracurricular activities, a friend and also the former executive…
I come from a Palestinian-American Muslim family. My family has always believed in following our culture closely as well as being able to assimilate with the community around us. As a Muslim I follow my religion closely, a religion that teaches its followers to not ignore their neighbors, but rather get to know them. My background in terms of culture and religious belief allow me to understand those with similar backgrounds. My contribution of diversity also comes from being the son of a woman who was an immigrant to this country, therefore, I understand the hard work children of immigrants face along with different challenges these children face at home. Also having been born in The United States and spending most of my life here, I understand…
My own socio-cultural position is that I am female Australia born caucasian with Irish heritage, which means I belong to dominate culture. Belonging to the dominate culture I understand I come from a position of privileged, which can have many implications when working with people from CALD Backgrounds (Kendall, 2001). Firstly, many people from CALD background may view me in a position of superiority due to my position of privilege. This view of superiority could make them feel disempower and feel uncomfortable engaging with me (Nylund, 2008). In addition, my views and perspective are that of western views such as an individualist approach. This could have implication as there could be a cultural misunderstanding, different values and…