Culteral Exsperience

Cultural Experience

Community Service

For this activity I volunteered as a "learn to skate" instructor for ice hockey. The taught kids the basics of skating, which is the fundamental skill in playing hockey. Skating is also something that is a good form of exercise, allowing children to stretch their legs, get regular exercise and in the winter some fresh air as well. I feel that contributing to the community in this way encourages others to enjoy life a little bit more. I am a firm believer in the value of teamwork, so teaching kids to skate is a means of getting them into something that will help them to learn to work with others.

My work with the skating school really help me to gain a sense of civic awareness. I was able to learn a little bit of classism. Hockey is sometimes considered more of a sport for the wealthy because of the cost of the gear. But the skating program helps with that, because there are low equipment costs. Kids can learn how to skate without having to deal with buying equipment and paying league fees. I found that the experience was great for me because I was able work with children who were poor and might otherwise not have been given that opportunity. I know that there are programs to provide equipment for underprivileged children, and so I really feel that the sport is more accessible than given credit for. As a result, I think I was able to make a difference by bringing together in the class children from all income levels, and I was able to get them all to work together towards a common objective.

I think this experience will help me in life. You need to be able to learn to treat everybody as equals, and in doing that you will gain their respect and be able to make a difference. For example I see myself getting into a career in marketing, and that is a business where you really do need to know how to relate to people on a human level, not just as stereotypes based on external characteristics.

b. Kurt took me to a black church one Sunday morning, to help me experience a different culture. For me, this was a very eye-opening experience. I was able to see the service and it was quite different from what I am used to at church. I thought that I would be made to feel kind of strange, but I came to the realization that the only one who was making me feel strange was myself.

I learned a lot from this activity. I became aware of things about the black community that I didn't know before, or that I only knew from inaccurate stereotypes. I learned about the importance of family, and the importance of faith. I saw a community that was stronger and more independent than perhaps I had realized. The community had leaders, people of influence, and Kurt introduced me to some of them. The way that people interact with one another there was very much like what anybody else would expect. I don't know why that surprised me but it did.

I don't suppose I made a difference to others -- I cannot possibly have been the first white guy to go there -- but I think that the experience made a difference to me. I learned a lot about the black community and to me that was important. Going into a career in marketing, it really just makes sense to know the people that you're going to be working with and marketing to. It is important to know that people everywhere are probably more normal than you would expect, and there is no reason to be afraid when immersing into a totally different culture.

c. I created a research studying about sexism. Having read the book about privilege I decided to test out some of the things in that book. So I did a research study about sexism to see if other guys around me were more sexist than maybe I thought they were. Turns out that was the case. I think that this really did forward my awareness of the issue. Sexism is something that I don't think too many people think about. We just accept our gender roles quite readily, and don't really understand people who take those roles differently. I learned a lot about how people perceive those of the other gender, and those ideas become embedded in our words, our actions and our perceptions.

I feel like I might have made a difference to the people I surveyed. As I was conducting the survey, I got the impression that many of them had never really thought about the issue of sexism once. They certainly didn't think that some of the things they said or did were sexist, even though they probably were in some way. I hope that I was able to get them to think about the issue more, to put it at the top of their minds, because sexism is an issue that isn't always talked about anymore.

The big takeaway for me from this exercise, being that I want to get into marketing, is that marketing plays a role in the formation and reinforcement of gender norms. We have pretty girl and dumb guy stereotypes -- I started watching for them in ads and it was amazing how prevalent our sexism is embedded even in our marketing. I think having a bit more understanding of this issue is going to help me as a marketer, to avoid pandering to these types of negative views, and maybe raising the standards for the messages we send our children through advertising.

d. I attended a lecture by Native American poet Ron Welburn. He read some poems from his book Coming Through Smoke and Dreaming. Attending this lecture was a real eye-opener for me. I never really gave much thought to the Native American perspective. It is very different from the everyday American perspective and I think the poetry -- the use of imagery -- really reminds us that their perspectives are different because they are rooted in a rich culture that is entirely different from our own.

I do not imagine that by attending the poetry reading I made much difference to anybody other than myself. The reading was attended by a fairly diverse demographic, which was interesting. I felt that I personally learned a lot about Native American society, and that was quite valuable to me.

Learning the perspective of others is always something that I want to do. Of course it helps later on in life when dealing with others. To me, not being a poetry expert, I still was amazed at how much can be conveyed through the poetry. I learned things about Native American culture, and how their past has an impact on their present day. I think that this will help me in dealing with Native American people later on, to have a better understanding of their perspective, and how they are like everyday people but at the same time have a very different worldview.

e. I wrote letters to two representatives commenting about different issues. I actually wanted to specifically challenge myself to write different letters to each, to try to see different political perspectives. All I see in politics is how people don't really work well with each other, and I think that is a bit damaging. As a youth, I would like to see that when it is time to vote next year, that I am able to understand the different issues and what I can expect from the different candidates with regards to those issues.