iOSam 4.0?

Alright, so perhaps it is a bit unrealistic to presume that I have reinvented myself for the 4th time now, but I have certainly learned a lot over the past 16 weeks. Everything that I learn, I do my best to hold on to and hope that it will one day be of use to me. The values and life-skills we spoke about in this course are all extremely relevant and I know that I will use them in my every-day life for many years to come.

This is all rather abstract, so let's take a look at the concrete goals I wrote for myself at the beginning of the semester.

Goal #1- Understand how my own experiences and perspectives of race, gender, sexual identity, nation, faith, and economic circumstances shape my reactions to others. To do this, I will become more in-touch with my cultural upbringing and compare my thoughts and values to the thoughts and values of people with different upbringings.

-- I would say that I have the most evidence to support my meeting of this goal more so than of the others. In this course, we were made to be very self-aware. I now know exactly how I see/react to things based on the topics listed above. These are things that seem pretty obvious, but in fact are not usually thought about on the level in which we discussed them. I became more connected to my cultural upbringing by merely writing (typing) about it. I was made aware of my similarities and differences to my classmates and was then able to connect a lot of these findings to our backgrounds and upbringings.

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Goal #2- Better communicate and interact effectively across unfamiliar cultures. I will work towards a greater understanding of the concept that communication differs in every culture and to not approach every situation with a “one size fits all” mindset.

-- I learned a lot about cultures and practices that were beforehand quite unfamiliar to me. Some of those include: Chinese, Latin American, Armenian, mixed-race, and hybrid. Because of this, I feel as though I would now be able to better interact with people from these cultures.

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Goal #3- Improve my ability to be culturally competent in Japanese society. I will educate myself on thoughts and values of various topics from the Japanese perspective.

-- So this one required a little bit of outside-the-classroom research. I chose to do my 3Ps presentation on the star festival in Tokyo as an introduction into the culture. This taught me about some of the things Japanese people value and sparked an interest in doing further research. I am now reading a book about Japan in preparation for my trip.

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Professor Webb,

I want to thank you for teaching this course. I know that you are first and foremost a Spanish professor - and we both know how important it is to teach foreign language - but it is arguably just as important to teach culture right there alongside it. When I entered your class, I was tired, jet-lagged, and not at all interested in being back in the states. And if I'm being completely honest, I'm still not all that thrilled to be back. However, I always looked forward to your class because it was an environment that was comfortable to me. I am normally uncomfortable in most of my non-German courses, but I felt as though I was in a room with others that saw the world in a similar way to how I do. I enjoyed the discussions we had and the opportunity to do some more writing and reflecting. I haven't had that opportunity in a while and it was helpful that we were assigned to do blogs so that I was in a way forced to do something that I really wanted to make time for. I think another one of the reasons I enjoyed your class was because your genuine passion and interest was evident in your teaching. I am super grateful that I was able to take this course with you and look forward to working with you next semester. Have a great winter break!

Sam :)

PS, check out the German Christmas Market

at Atlantic Station if you have time!