Nov. 24th, 2005

aintbroke: (Oh <3 <3 <3)
I'm taking a class this semester in "Intercultural Communication" and oh man, so much of the time I hate it. The material is presented badly, and my classmate are, by and large, gibbering loons. (From this class springs the infamous class-wide realization, that not all stereotypes are bad. No, really. I wish I were joking.) Mostly, this class is frustrating because it could be so terrific. The subject matter is both familiar and compelling, and it's just not living up to expectation.
But. We turned in a paper on Monday that was supposed to be about our "face." Face, here, being the image you want to project to the world. It's by and large an unconscious thing, so this paper was supposed to clue us in to how we work at being seen "correctly."
Mine ended up being a rant about coming to America, and the marginalization of culture. I'm not sure how this got mixed up in my head, but strangely interlocking concepts are kind of a trademark of mine and it makes a certain sense. The surprise was how angry I was in the paper.
Look, I am a fairly levelheaded person. I have a few days where I am outright annoyed or angry at something (and really, we’re talking like three or four days a year), but it's always about something definite. I totally don't get what I was so angry about in this paper, and I was furious. At some nebulous undefined nothing! For no good reason! It was all very confusing.
Then in class, (of course, after I turned in the paper with no conclusion) the professor lectured about the global nomad, and while we didn't really go into it in depth, I did some reading, and just... Really. Wow. Every now and then you'll find a concept, a label, a definition that just speaks to you. I'm not too comfortable with many labels; human- sure, female- uh ok, college student- at the moment, scientist- not so much, American-no, Colombian- no, white- no, ethnic- no.
I have a hard time defining myself because the things that really matter to me don't fit into English-speaking cultural contexts, and I don’t know how to go about explaining them. It's a little annoying to have to give my life story any time I'm asked where I was born, but I'm not from where I was born, and I'm not from where my family lives, and I honestly don't know how to answer the question. It's frustrating because it feels like bragging of the "Oh, I am so exotic and unique!" genre but what's my other option?
And I don't know why it didn't occur to me that other people do this too, but the next time someone asks where I'm from, or what ethnicity I am, or where I belong in the grander scheme of the world, I can tell them.
I'm a third culture kid. And in my culture? I'm totally normal, right down to my nebulous rage at the universe.

So anyway. This year, I am thankful for college. I am thankful for brainstretching and new perspectives, and classes that somehow defy expectation. I'm glad for brilliant teachers, and mediocre course material. I'm glad that I'm here, and I'm learning, and I'm glad that this is the last Thanksgiving I spend studying for tests.

I'm also thankful that it's the time of year that cranberries and yams are on sale. There is not enough good to say about that. This is my favorite winter-fruit recipe cranberry tea cake. )

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