Agua

The water metaphor which was discussed in class is "culture is like water to a fish, it is absolutely essential and it permeates every single moment and action of a fish, but it is probably something a fish never ever sees or thinks about..just as our culture permeates our actions and actions without us realizing it." It was difficult for me to come up with an example of "water" in my life, but then it hit me. It was probably so hard for me to realize because it is actually just like water to a fish. I am always surrounded by it whether I'm the one using it or somebody else is. What I am talking about is technology. These days, no matter what, everybody is always somehow connected to technology. Everybody has cell phones. Everybody owns a computer or a laptop. Everybody has iPods. Everybody always has the choice to stay connected. Technology is always surrounding us.

I try to navigate the water, or technology, around me by staying respectful. Technology sometimes interferes with relationships. I have found myself having conversations with people, only to be interrupted with a text or call that they have recieved. I find that extremely disresepectul. Even though you do have the option to stay connected, it doesn't mean that you always have to respond to it. Sure, I love having the ability to shoot a text to my friends to see what they are doing or to just check in, but I don't think it is necessary to constantly be sitting on your phone or laptop to almost stalk people. Since when did it become so important to know what everybody else is doing? Why can't people just stay concentrated on their life and mind their own business? More than once, I have found myself annoyed with my phone. I have an iPhone, and I am obsessed with it. I know that I probably couldn't live without it. But sometimes I find myself ignoring it. I always have my iPhone on me, but there have been times where I just don't answer any of the calls or texts I have gotten. The fact that I do this actually bothers my friends about me. It's kind of funny but they have gotten mad at me when I don't answer their texts, but they don't understand that they shouldn't take it so personally. It's not like I am purposely ignoring them, I just don't want to talk to anybody. I want to stay in my own little bubble and worry about just myself and not feel the need to talk to everybody. I think that I behaviorally adjust to the cultural forces going on around me by setting my own guidelines and not conforming to the common belief that since you have the ability to answer to texts and calls, you have to respond to them.

Two values which I embrace are Individual Personality and Religiosity. I think that it is very important to be your own person and not confrom to everyone around you. I've been described by my friends more than once of being "real," and I take pride in that. I don't find it necessary to act differently around different groups of people. I am constantly true to myself. I think that I have my own style in the sense that I wear what I want. I have huge blonde curly hair and I embrace it. I'm goofy and I don't try to hide it. In my middle school days I would always straighten my hair because it was different, but now I embrace it. I like being my own person and having a unique personality. Along with embracing my Individual Personality, I also embrace Religiosity. Religion is every important in my life, and after going to a Christian summer camp two summers in a row, I learn that there is not reason to hide my religion. At camp I learned more about my Christian religion and how to share it with others. I also learned that people will have different viewpoints on religion and they sometimes may shut you down or treat you differently because of your beliefs, but I have learned how to deal with those and always stay true to my religion. Two values which I may creatively adjust to find my own hapiness would be Romantic Love and and Progress. I would first adjust Romantic Love to find my own hapiness because first of all, I don't think that all love needs to be romantic. I think that it is possible to be in love or love someone without it having to be romantic. Secondly, there is a quote that I like which is "Just because someone doesn't love you the way you want them to doesn't mean that they don't love you with all they have." I think that is quote explains how you can adjust a value into your own. This quote is true, love doesn't always have to extremely romantic or the way that you pictured it, but you can adjust to it and it can then be just as perfect as you expected it to be. I would also adjust Progess. I chose progress because I think that progress has multiple interpretations. Progress for one person could be more or less the same for another person. I measure my progress after I set my own goals. Whether it be progress in the work environment, school environment, or with friends, I can change my progress and adjust it to how I am doing with my goals. So, I live by and adjust different sets of values depending on my outlook on life.

Infantilization

Before the discussion about infantilization a few weeks ago in class, I never really thought about how common it is to want to treat adults or even teens like children. The one place that kept coming into mind when thinking about infantilization was our own school. Stevenson is the epitome of treating it's students like little kids. I feel like we have more, crazier, security gaurds than some airports. Don't get me wrong, there are two security gaurds that I do love, but I always feel like the other ones are trying to find the smallest, stupidest thing we do wrong to get us into trouble. At lunch, security gaurds walk around and just stare at you and your friends while you are eating; your just eating! If you go into your bag and shuffle around looking for something, they will automatically come up and accuse you of texting. If you even need to share a chair with a friend at lunch because there aren't anymore chairs, they will yell at you and tell you to find a new one.. even if that is impossible. I understand that they are there to try to keep us all safe and to inforce the rules, but I think they take their jobs to the extreme. Also, so do some teachers. Teachers claim that we are in high school to learn to mature and get ready for the real world once we are out of high school, but if teachers continue treating us the way they are, it will be impossible to prepare for the real world. The first day of school my spanish teacher told our class that we aren't aloud to use the bathroom unless it is an emergancy. But one day when a kid clearly really needed to use the restroom and claimed that it was an emergancy, our teacher wouldn't let him. Who denies anybody the right to use the restroom? Even kids in preschool are aloud to use the restroom when they need to- they just need a supervisor to go with them. Atleast we don't need a teacher to come with us to the restroom, right? That's a plus. Maybe we are treated like this because they feel like since we are under their watch they need to have complete control. I don't know. But in my opinion, the faculty at our school should not claim that we are in high school to mature and prepare for our lives ahead of us, if we aren't even given the opportunity to do so.

Culture

So it has unfortunately taken me a while to spit another blog out, but I've finally got something to say. Our culture is obviously different than other cultures when it comes to our customs, language, and values. When I was thinking of some words/phrases/and sayings that we use compared to other cultures, the one word I came up with to describe it was sarcasm. When I started working at a restaurant as a hostess, I met a busser who was from Columbia. He didn't speak much english because he had just moved to America, but I managed to learn just a little bit about him. He had told me that he moved here by himself to stay with his Aunt and Uncle to make money for his family who still lives in Columbia. Recently, however, he has improved his English dramatically and I am able to carry on hour long conversations with him. I asked him how he learned English so well and he said he learned it just by talking to other people in English. When I asked if it was hard to learn, he laughed and said that it was incredibly hard, because there are so many words that have different meanings. He also mentioned that he had a hard time understanding people at first when they were being sarcastic. When he said that it clicked into my head that we had a discussion about this in class, and how real it is in our society today. As I was driving home I was thinking about how hard it would be to enter a new country, without parents, not speaking the native language. I think that we use sarcasm in our language because we have gotten so comfortable with eachother we don't think about the double meanings to what we say. When people say "Shutup!" or "I hate you!" that can be understood more ways than one. I was walking in the hallway last thursday and I heard one girl yelling "Shutup! I hate you!" when she was trying to flirt with another boy, but then I turned the corner and somebody yelled "Shutup!" and it was apparent that they were actually mad at the person they were yelling it to. To somebody just entering our culture and trying to adapt to the language, it would be very difficult to understand the meanings behind our words if we were all always sarcastic. Before my friend from Columbia learned was even the word sarcasm was, he was confused. Obviously people won't ever stop being sarcastic; I don't think that it is always bad. But I do think that it is important for people to think before they speak to different people, because what they say could be taken the wrong way.