Before Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, I did not give much thought to who I was. After being assigned the paradigm paper, it made me sit down for a couple of hours and really think about what has shaped my identity. Ethnicity was the first topic of thought concerning my identity. This was difficult to figure out as my family is a melting pot of ethnicities. However, the one that I identify with is German American. I am an American with German ancestry. “Grummert” was assigned to my great-great-grandfather when he arrived in America with the last name “Grummet”. In German, “Grummet” translates to “to cut”. When digging deeper into my ancestry, the defining traits are evident. My personality traits are almost stereotypical for a German. …show more content…
My parents classify our family as somewhere between working and middle class. They make enough to own a house, put food on the table, put clothes on our backs, even take vacations every once in a while. However, my parents and I combined do not make enough to pay for my education. In fact, I am the first person in my entire family to go to a four-year institution. The main reason behind that is lack of money. Hooray for student loans (not)! Education is significant though. Throughout high school, I was involved in three different clubs and was a student athletic trainer for two and a half years. That drove the ambition to go to college and earn a degree. It also drove the need for a car. After buying my first car, I was able to start working and have a little bit of an income. Even now, I go to class during the week and work during the weekends. In today’s world, it is in the best of interest of not only today, but the future. We are often asked if we want to turn out to be like our parents. Money is included in this question and that is why working now—even while going to school—will prepare me for the future. I have the opportunity to move up in class, be in a better place financially than my parents, and eventually pay my parents back for everything they did for me. While it will take some time, it will be worth
I am a first generation immigrant; I arrive into the United States as a refugee. As every human being set a goal, I have also set myself a goal of education. While I was perusing my educational goal, situation came where I have to choose between education and work. I have chosen education with no doubt, but the decision brings me and my family a financial burden. Although, I do not have any regret of my decision, sometime it is hard to disregard the financial need to support the family, and unable to afford the most necessity things.
College: Worth the Cost Sending a kid off to college is a terrifying and joyful thing for parents from what I have heard personally. Some parents are horrified at the thought of their teen living without supervision and being able to come and go as they please. Partying at sorority or fraternity houses is all parents think college consist of. It 's a place to learn and grow as an individual, a place of hope for a fresh start.
In order to barely make ends meet, many worked around the clock at a minimum wage job. My parents worked long hours for 7 days a week. Despite the lack of time family time, my parents managed to instill a love for education in me and motivated me to pursue my dreams despite how unlikely the odds may seem. The majority of my friends didn’t have the same support system and therefore could not focus on creating a future because the current moment was so unstable and unpredictable. Thus
When you were in school did you have a job? Did you ever want to go out with your friends but didn’t have the money too? Have you ever had problems with your vehicle but couldn’t afford to have it fixed or have anyone to help get it fixed? Or wonder if you will have enough gas to make it through the week until you get paid again? Well these are some of the problems I have working for minimum wage in high school.
The American Dream is not equally available for everyone as children are affected by their financial problems. “For many of these kids, family income may have a stronger impact on their futures than individual work ethic. That’s not the American Dream we promised them,”said John Gomperts. This idea provides evidence that low-income students opportunities are limited by the amount of money their family has. This idea helps us understand the power money has towards the success of failure of students is stronger than we thought.
There is many people that go to college, but because of the cost they don't get through college. The elevated costs of college cause not only students to struggle paying for college, but also to struggle financially paying for college when they are done. In many cases, after graduating, young adults who don’t find a job will become poorer, increasing the gap between the rich and the
It is difficult to calculate how greatly the status of being undocumented has impacted my life. I was ten years old when my family and I immigrated to the United States. My parents have worked multiple jobs so my siblings and I could have a chance at a better future than they did. Even after thirteen years in the U.S. – I still overhear my parents’ conversations about deportations.
I am an international student from Vietnam who came to the United States to pursue higher education. I was brought up in a very unique culture and family traditions, and this has had a strong influence on my beliefs and mindsets. Together with all the experiences that I have been through so far in my life, I have formed some social and personal identities that I might or might be aware of. Such identifies are an important tool that can stay with me and remind me every day of who I am and my origin.
It is better to have money saved that will only go to college rather than to try to be last minute and get money just to make it through the first semester of college. One issue with working 2 jobs or saving money is that it can take away a lot of someone's time and they can end up missing a lot in life. The worse that can happen really is you are behind a less of money, but it’s always better to have a little debt than a huge one that will take 20 years to pay
Loans allow receiving a college education seem like a smoother process considering that such a hefty amount to pay is divided so that it can be paid for in moderation. Despite the fact that it’s split into many payments, it’s still a large quantity all in all so unless indebted students aim for high income jobs, there would many years of difficulty to come after college. For this reason, undergraduates make it their goal to go after jobs which would prevent them from being constantly pressured to pay off debt. Thus, student debt is both a crisis and a reason to encourage persistence towards greater ambitions (Hillman, 41). It is a tremendous thing when a student seeks to be financially comfortable or even rich in the future but not when it is for the wrong reasons.
The background of my cultural identity I am an African American female but that isn’t all there is to know me for. I am an African American girl who is very interactive with my religion and also my culture. Cultural identity can be hard to explain because some people don’t know what’s really in their culture and they fail to see , and understand it. I know what my cultural identity is because of my ethiopian flag, the baked macaroni, and the movie the lion king.
The world is filled with people, and like snowflakes, each person is not the same as another. Each person identifies with different aspects of their lives to create their own personal identities. I personally identify with my Italian side of my family to help form who I am today. I have found myself connecting with this side more so than the other parts of my identity. It affects how I live my life by becoming the center to the culture surrounding me.
I presently find myself at that point in my life where I’m theoretically to decide what I want to do for the remainder of my life. There’s no uncertainty that I will pursue a college education, as that is what is paramount for my future. Malcom X once said “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.” My ultimate goal is to acquire the most promising, advantageous education possible. With any luck, this will permit me a career that sustains a suitable quality of life.
Throughout my experiences in this course so far, I have had many opportunities to reflect on my own past and have begun to better understand my own cultural identity. It has been much more difficult to wrap my head around than I would have predicted it to be because so many things play into the construction of an identity that it can be hard to look at all of those separate pieces together. My cultural identity, like all others, is more complicated than it first appears. I identify as a white person, a woman, an American, a gay person, and a feminist, just to name a few. While all of these labels carry with them stereotypes and expectations, they also interplay with the cultural influences I was subject to throughout my childhood.
Cultural Anthropology is the study of human beings, their behavior and how patterns in their language, personalities, gender, family, art, politics or rituals learned from being a part of a certain society gives meaning to their existence and affects how they organize their lives. Culture Involves Concepts, Generalizations, Abstractions, Assumptions, and Ideas. The ants are locked into the specifics of their nest-building behavior. It must work the same all the time. If some important variable is different, the ants cannot make specific adjustments.