We live in a society that although we are diverse in culture, and in some places geographically united, we are still mentally divided. Every person is facing an internal struggle most likely as difficult as your own if not more. Some people have adapted well to overlook their own issues and get the best out of life while others have not figured out an efficient mindset to do so. Now most adults of the older generation have become used to their daily problems due to mass experience over their years but I am going to discuss the perspective of students who are still trying to understand the best possible coping mechanisms themselves.
To start off I am a 22-year-old, Filipino American student born and raised here in the Valley. Growing up, I believe the toughest situations I have dealt with in school would definitely be social interactions on account of my race. As an Asian American, there are many harsh stereotypes of Asian students being overachievers, extremely serious, and non-friendly. This made simple tasks such as making friends difficult. For example, my middle school was heavily Latino in population. Most of them have been friends with exclusively their own racial group growing up within Latino communities so their interactions with me always felt odd/foreign. If I ever tried laughing for example, they would look at me strange as if I wasn’t capable of humor. Or if the teacher passed a Latino student a good grade, they would all cheer/congratulate them even if they weren’t initial friends because they knew the test was hard but if I was passed a good grade back, everyone would shrug it off like its nothing special because “he did well because he’s Asian…” This stereotype to them, just negates all the hard work I put into certain activities to them, only because of my race which felt insulting. As a kid, I admit there many times when I wish I could’ve talked back to them for their racist comments, but if I did, I knew that I was physically outnumbered and could be potentially ganged up on so my only option that I came up with was to try to laugh at myself, rolling through the insults and turn the jokes from laughing at me, to all of us laughing together. From that point on, if someone made a silly joke like “haha why are your Asian eyes so small?” normally I would just turn away to ignore them causing them to laugh harder but I would respond in a joking way myself by saying a joke of my own like “Asian eyes are like this so we can watch our favorite movies…” Then they stand confused for a second to which I then add “Those movies are in WIDE screen!” The entire group laughs extremely hard, but together with me. After several interactions like this, they eventually stopped making racist side comments and began to just see me as a normal friend/person who doesn’t take themselves that seriously. They even began referring to me as Filipino to match my racially avowed identity of what I preferred being called rather than just simply being called Asian. As time went by, they also enjoyed laughing at themselves over silly jokes we all made and became best friends for it. I understand that to some other people, my idea of laughing at myself may seem even worse than ignoring harsh side comments, but to me I think that laughing at yourself with the offenders is a way of accepting each other’s faults and achieving mutual peace by laughter which is something I’d rather have than prideful silence.
Now the first student I interviewed is of Canadian descent and her name is Taren who is majoring in civil engineering like myself. According to an article on female engineers from Forbes, “Women only make up 24% of the computing workforce and that number is declining”(Loubier). Unlike my racial issues, she explained that her biggest problem has been sexism especially within the engineering department on account of her major that is majority chosen by men. We actually met during my freshman year in a Calculus 1 class and I noticed our professor tended to always call on the girls in class to answer the toughest questions and let the guys slide by without having to answer. Taren told me a story about her first encounter with this professor that she explains that what he told her “was very shocking. He asked what my major was and I replied civil engineering. Then he said ‘Oh… you should switch. That’s more of a guy’s thing.’ then he moved on to discussing the Calculus course like nothing happened. I was too surprised to properly respond after that then shrugged it off but I really hated that.” She says she has to deal with a variety of situations like this within the engineering department on a weekly basis. The society and family she originates from in Canada she explained is actually very gender progressive compared to the U.S. in terms of equality/acceptance. I’ve attempted to mentally put myself in his shoes and I think that this professor despite his rude comments, truly believes he isn’t attempting to offend her due to his positionality in comparison to hers. The older generation in terms of engineering have mostly been men and are not used to women succeeding/pursuing engineering, so in his terms, I think he must’ve been trying to offer “genuine” advice in order for her to(in his own version of society), prosper within her studies. Although we both dislike these types of occurrences, she took it upon herself to endure it, prove this group of men wrong and show that women do belong in engineering through displaying that statement through action/merit within her studies. I asked her when she thinks there will be a time when this type of sexism within engineering finally ceases and she replied “most likely when we become the older generation.”
The next two students I spoke with are active members of the homosexual community named, Andres and Simon. Throughout our discussion, both emphasized that the most substantial issue for them in school is how they are treated due to their sexuality, in terms of making friends and study groups at school. Andres mentioned that “people started treating me a bit differently once they found out I am gay. Some in a positive way, others negatively. Like a positive example would be that girls tended to trust/befriend me more easily but guys had an opposite reaction by not exactly insulting me but would take options to not have to associate with me.” Based on my analysis, Andres’ situation is a “double edged sword” in terms of his interactions with other students. The women he meets, I believe due to a more, risky society in terms of dating, tend to trust him more since they don’t sense any romantic ulterior-motives. While the men had this irrational fear he described it as “them afraid of being seen as gay” for associating with him. Simon however brought up an interesting method of handling this problem in which he stated that “If a guy doesn’t know my orientation beforehand, sometimes I purposely change my tone of voice to sound more ‘manly’ in order to make them more comfortable.” In order to deal with this, he altered his tone of voice around guys so they would treat him normally then as soon as they’ve become friends for a while, he told me that he would inform them of his sexuality and “if they reacted positively, they are definitely worth staying friends with.” I like to see this idea he had as a reaction to the practice of one of the six points of entry into intercultural praxis, known as Reflection followed by another point, called Informing. Through reflection, he realized that the guys tended to avoid him out of fear for their own social reputation and that they didn’t see him as a normal human being but rather, only as a gay person. By putting himself in their shoes, he compromised by adjusting his presence around them by changing his voice. This caused the straight fearful guys to get to know him better as a person since they weren’t aware of his orientation until he informed them of it. This helped widen their mental horizon of homosexuals as just normal people and as shown by the positive reactions, proved to them that being friends with a homosexual person isn’t worth panicking over.
The fourth student I interviewed is a Latino student named Jonathan who wanted to express the struggles of coming from a low income family. His family lives in Inglewood and he commutes to Northridge every single weekday at 6 AM while working a full time job at an insurance company. According to an article regarding the records of the University of Texas, “Many… from… low-income families… had some of the lowest SAT scores on the Austin campus”(Selingo). Statistically it is common for students of low income backgrounds to not do so well in education. I asked him what the most difficult part of his education has been and he said it was “doing my best to always keep trying in school. Most of my relatives are not great examples of a full education so they’re relying on me to be the first but most want me to quit school and engineering and just start working off the bat. I wanna succeed to get them out of that neighborhood.” The cultural values he grew up in, includes a strong passion for taking care of one another as a family but his environment doesn’t encourage him to prosper in his major as much as he’d like. This issue seems like a debate between long term vs. short term benefits. As in, his family mostly wants him to focus on his full time job instead of going to school to support them all financially/quickly but he himself wants to finish his major to get a better higher paying job within engineering but the only drawback is that the engineering job is a couple years away from now. Jonathan says that his best way to keep staying productive in school, is picturing how well his future success will pay off in order to help his family.
The fifth student I spoke with is a mechanical engineering major named Angelica, of Chinese/Filipino heritage and she described her biggest problem throughout education would be expectations among her family members. She elaborated that, “As a first generation American when my parents moved here from the Philippines, worked for several years, they told me as a kid that they accepted that they won’t be as successful as hoped for but intended to lay the groundwork for their child’s success in order to highly surpass them. To me, I feel that if I fail to reach that expectation, I am also failing their dreams/aspirations as well. My parents also mentioned how they feel about other races/groups who had a higher advantage such as the Whites which further helped their acceptance of not advancing among social class.” I highly resonate with her situation as a first generation American myself whose parents have told me similar expectations. Angelica’s parents seem to have a sense of racial naturalism in which they believe White people of European descent are naturally superior to non-White people. We both agreed that although we see the points our parents are trying to make in terms of wanting their kids to improve, we also concluded that our parents’ ideologies are a bit flawed if they truly wish for us to surpass them. As in, if they accepted not being able to succeed partially because Whites are supposedly superior, then we figured it is a bit strange for us to accept their belief on top of being asked to defy that naturalism. Angelica mentioned that this idea caused her a lot of stress through childhood, high school, and the early years of college. She decided in her later years of college that the best way to get over this problem is to not to excel due to her parents’ expectations, but to succeed in order to please her own goals in life and hope that they will support her decisions as long as she is happy. Since that decision, she says her educational experience has been more calming rather than tiring as a whole.
The last student I interviewed is a biology major who is of Russian descent, named Artem. He was born and raised in Russia but moved here to California with his parents as a teenager. His most substantial issue he had throughout his education was “fitting in” America as he exclaims, “When we moved here I had to figure out how to make new friends but the more difficult challenge was figuring out the entire country in terms of social values completely different from Russia like small talk and stuff was super weird to get used to and as I got used to this place over the years, I had a tough time classifying myself as truly Russian or American.” Artem seems to have struggled with both communication among the people of his new home and later on, with deciding his cultural identity or his sense of self that is shaped by cultural experiences and social locations. According to an article I found about Russian Customs that may cause culture shock for Americans it states, “Americans are chatty and… quite loud… Russians very much go the other way: no one will ever give you the big picture of what’s going on, only the barest information necessary”(Wenger). Me and Artem discussed of how people used to view him as rude for being so direct with others then later had to adjust to their expectations by talking more about his opinions as opposed to pure quick objective facts. The culture shock encouraged him to adapt to his environment and over time, it worked out greatly. Although a few years later, he had issues classifying his sense of cultural identity as an American or Russian person. Artem described that he realized he was so mentally engrossed within both cultures that he didn’t think he was solely shaped by one but at the time, felt he had to choose to give himself peace of mind during his studies along with dealing with friends. He said his parents were very helpful with this issue and told him that there’s no shame in being shaped by both cultures as long he pursues his goals and that his true friends shouldn’t care what he culturally identifies himself as.
Now in conclusion, this assignment has definitely enhanced my perspective on fellow students I encounter in daily life. This reminded me to always imagine myself in someone else’s perspective to understand why they may act a certain way or have a certain event occur that they could not control. For example, if I see a person struggling in class or constantly being called on by the professor, it could perhaps be mean that other people such as a professor doesn’t want a female student to succeed, or perhaps someone’s mannerisms may strangely change out of nowhere but in actuality they are trying to make someone comfortable/understand to see them as more than their sexuality, or someone’s desperateness to do well in class or even abandon schoolwork may stem from intense family expectations, or what I may consider rude behavior could be a Russian person’s version of small talk. We are all people who wish to live life to the fullest within our education and should try our hardest to make each other’s experiences less troublesome because such unkindness simply isn’t worth the effort.
Works Cited
Selingo, Jeffrey J. “Why Do so Many Students Drop out of College? And What Can Be Done about It?” The Washington Post, WP Company, 8 June 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2018/06/08/why-do-so-many-students-drop-out-of-college-and-what-can-be-done-about-it/?utm\_term=.bb66a9072100.
Loubier, Andrea. “The Future Of Women Engineers.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 16 Nov. 2017, www.forbes.com/sites/andrealoubier/2017/11/16/the-future-of-women-engineers/#364440b8ac3c.
Wenger, Tim. “The Biggest Culture Shocks Americans Face in Russia.” Matador Network, Matador Network, 7 Mar. 2018, matadornetwork.com/read/biggest-culture-shocks-americans-face-russia/.
Sorrells, Kathryn. Intercultural Communication: Globalization and Social Justice. SAGE, 2015.
Submitted November 24, 2018 at 12:39AM by Domonero https://ift.tt/2R51GYm
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