The Role of Culture in Shaping us as Individuals :: Sociology Essays

The Role of Culture in Shaping us as Individuals Culture has a big impact on how we all fit in as individuals in today’s society, and since this assignment is about that I decided to include some of my own experiences to illustrate my point of view and compare it with those of my classmates and some of the readings. My family and I moved to United States in 1998 from Albania. My parents believed that I and my sister would get a better education here and also it would be useful and interesting to learn another language and its culture. Considering I didn’t speak a word of English I was very scared about starting high school. I was scared about fitting in with the other kids, I was scared about not being able to understand them, and not sure how my culture would impact the way how I looked at things. I remember my first day at the bus stop, when this very handsome guy approached me and said â€Å"Good morning, you must be new†¦What’s Up?† At that momement I kept looking up thinking†¦Ã¢â‚¬ Gosh I don’t really see anything up there†¦what is he referring to?† His name was Michael and he kept repeating the phrase â€Å"What’s up† thinking maybe I didn’t hear him. All I remember is turning red in my face and using the same phrase I had told myself many times that I was never going to use†¦ â€Å"I don’t speak English.† When we moved here I told myself I was going to try my best however I wasn’t going to be like another one of those foreigners you see in the movies that move to a different country and make no attempt to learn the language. I also told my self that I was going to repeat every word that I heard in my brain and then later using the dictionary to find out what that word meant. My favorite subject in highs cool was math, since it required little English knowledge and my least favorite subject was Physical Education. I would have never thought that I was going to hate Physical Education because usually that’s a class most students would probably like to take again and again.