Self-Cultural Identity Paper Who I am, what I believe, what my morals and values are and what my views on diversity are, is my cultural identity. The reasons behind why my views on these things are the way that they are, are due to my upbringing, my family, and the way I was raised. My personal experiences that I have I had in my 21 years of life also have a huge impact on why I have the views that I do. As you are raised and taught or learn through experiences what to believe, you learn to think that what YOU believe is what is right. It is not till you get a little older that you learn there are other ways of believing and that just because those others ways may not be the same as yours does not make them wrong. Throughout elementary school I was homeschooled. My mom was my teacher and I loved it. Everyone has the idea that homeschoolers lack social skills due to not being around other kids all day long and though this is true in some cases, my parents were aware of this possibility and did not want to short us kids those necessary skills in life. Therefore, they made sure we stayed involved in other activities such as “field trips” with other homeschool parents and their kids and sports. Sports was a huge part of who I was growing up. I played basketball from 1st grade through my senior year of high school and I played softball throughout middle school. I went to middle school and high school in a predominantly white community. Though there were only a handful of African-Americans in my classes, I rarely heard of very much racial harassment go on. I grew up in very strong Christian home and due to this, I have very strong morals of what I believe is right and wrong. Though my views are strong I do not push them upon anyone and also believe that everyone has a right to their own opinion. Just because I see things to be one way does not mean that another person is wrong for seeing them differently. In fact, I enjoy talking to people who do believe differently than me. In my opinion, growing up in such a strong, religious based family has put me in a culture where family matters more than most things. Traditionally, my family does everything together. The big holidays. The small holidays. Birthdays (all of them). Any event, big or small, there is always a family gathering for it. Because I grew up like this, it is normal for me and I love it. However, my boyfriend grew up in a completely different family setting. They all did things together on occasion but not often. Being a part of his family has shown me how different my family may seem too many other families. As I have grown up, I have learned that though I use to think other families were strange if they didn’t celebrate events together I have grown to learn that possibly my family was the odd ball out. It is way more common for families to not value that time together as much as my family does. Because my cultural identity believes strongly that whatever it is you believe, you make sure you stand strongly on, it has helped shape my social identity as well. I believe this because I feel as though I have always stood on what I believe. I don’t change who I am or the way I act for other people and because of this, it has drawn my best friends to me who believe similarly. I would say pretty confidently that I have grown up in a low context culture. Low context culture consists of being direct and explicit, messages are plainly coded, details are verbalized, and reactions are on the surface and many other things. For example, I am the director of the Outdoor Program on campus at Oregon Tech and the way I communicate with my staff is very direct. We have weekly meetings where we talk about what happened on the last trip and what the coming trips will look like. If there is an issue we address it very detailed and clearly. Another reason I believe I live in a low context culture is simply from the way I have experienced commitments throughout growing up. It seems in my culture, commitment is not placed highly on the priority list for people. It is very easy and common for a person to make plans and then last minute back out. I believe that I grew up in a highly individualistic culture and I am still living in one. In my culture, most people focus on independence, privacy and themselves. Interestingly enough, I was talking to my little 13 year old sister the other day and when I asked her if she had a boyfriend, she responded by saying, “NO. I am independent. I don’t need a boyfriend.” This surprised me yet at the same time it didn’t. I was surprised because in my mind I was thinking, why is my 13 year old sister talking about independence? Yet after taking this intercultural communications class it made me realize that this idea of independence is just the culture we are growing up in. Apparently, we are learning this from before the age of 13 and even into our adulthood. Woman especially are growing tremendously in the workforce which in turn is making it so that woman no longer need to depend on men to put the roof over their head or food in their belly. People in my culture everyday are becoming more and more independent. Though I wish I could say that I live in a culture where indulgence is the focus of life. I cannot. My culture is all about restraint. It’s about work, work, work, and little play or fun. Happiness is important but being happy will not keep that roof over your head and food on the table every night. I was taught if this means you will play less than that is just a fact of life. My parents loved to say “life isn’t always fair”. I would say that I influence this restraint view because of how busy I always am. I go to school full time and work more than part-time. My day is a constant back to back something fills my hours from the time I wake till the time I go to sleep. I would also like to think that I influence my culture to have some sort of fun in life due to the yoga that I do to relax or the adventures that I go on through my work. Although I do work many hours, I love what I do and I believe that that is a mixture of indulgence and restraint. Communication does not only influence my cultural identity but any person’s cultural identity. Have you ever sat and thought what life would look like if no one could communicate? Would we have relationships with people? Maybe. But how? Communication is what makes this world go round. I was just recently talking with a counselor about communication and how important it is. When you are talking to a person and you both speak the same language, you would think that they are going to hear exactly what you are saying. However that is not always true. The other day I was trying to tell my boyfriend something that I thought was completely nice and only trying to make him understand what I was explaining. After I got done talking he had a look on his face that told me he was obviously frustrated. What happen was although he heard the words I was saying, he heard a different meaning behind those words than what I meant for him to hear. Which then broke down our communication and if I would not have clarified with him and asked why he was frustrated, I could have easily walked about thinking in my mind, I told him what I needed him to know yet in his mind he still doesn’t know. It can almost be worse than not communicating at all, if you do not clarify that what you are communicating to one person is what they hear.