cultural identity report

Cultural reporter project

What I experienced during my college life was totally different than my life when I stay with my parents. I have lived with my parents in a beautiful seaside city called Qingdao in China for 18 years since I was born. I have never left them more than a week before I attend college. It was really challenge for my family during the first year I stayed in United States. This is because my parents have prepared everything for me and I just need to study before I attend college. When I go to university, I need to do everything all by myself and my parents will not help me anyway. So our communication was a little different than we used to do. And it changes as I stay longer in the United States. So there are many conflicts during the time I studied in the United States.

I keep video chat with my family two or three times every week.  My parents always wonder what happened to me every day because they have never been to US before. Everything happened to me is a little different than my hometown. Of course, the culture conflict happens all the time when I just come to US. I adopt much more western culture value than eastern traditional culture value, but my parents still live in my hometown and didn’t change their value as much as I did. One example would be my major. Since I live on campus and I was the only foreigner in my dorm, I observe how Americans behave and doing things every day. All the friends around me choose their major in terms of their own preference. But I have to choose one of the majors under the business department because my father’s preference. I feel unequal and we negotiate and communicate this topic many times. When I talk about this issue, my father sometimes just keep quiet and stop talking to me for a while. This makes us both feel strange and the environment of the conversation is not good. This conflict has continued for a long time to me. I always feel stressful and cannot deal with it for more than one year. We talked about this issue for many times and key thing for us to deal with that is bring new information into the conversation. We both do many researches about the majors and other things about the current economy situation and the future of the job market. As a result, we got a deal- I can choose my preference as my minors. Right now, I don’t regret I choose marketing as my major and becoming love it. Thanks to the way I talked to my parents and they let me know how important to change information among us and we can analyze the advantages and disadvantages of everything. Parents’ experience was always the most valued information to look at.

After going through those events, I realized that not only the national history affected my perspectives, but also the cultural- group histories in Nebraska area did it. The general history of the United States has the independent spirit and Nebraskans showed me what is independent. People around me taught me that how to decide and make a decision all by myself during these four years in college. Nebraskans are honest, kind-hearted and friendly. They can chat with strangers easily. I did not see these qualities appeared in other regions in the United States quite often.