Personal Artifacts

The cable bridge from the Tri-Cities, Washington-- my hometown.  It's unique culture has really become part of my own culture. It is traditional to take pride in the fact that we are not like the rest of Washington (we're small-town, conservative, and have rodeos and county fairs).  Because I grew up in this location, I am comfortable in cities and in the middle of nowhere because it is a lovely combination of both. I also am familiar with words referring to nuclear power plants.

I'm a college student.  That means that there is a common language of stress, midterms, sleeplessness and shortness of money.  But it also means that I engage in a great many scholarly discussions as my peers and I try to figure out how the new information that we have received fits into the world that we are currently experiencing.  Also, college students tend to be well-read.  This picture is one that I took in the HBLL while writing a textbook but I have talked to many friends and professors who have recommended books to me and I have read them and they change the way I view the world.  In our culture, being well-educated is synonymous with being well-read.  This gives us a wide variety of subjects to discuss using words and examples that would be foreign to other people.

I'm a student at BYU.  As such I am a college student that does not drink and does not have sex, putting me in a unique culture that many other people would not understand.  We have words like "SWKT" and "Wilk" and "blue book" that would confuse someone who does not go here.  I have a predictable feeling of guilt Tuesdays at 11 because I'm not at devotional.  The Honor Code is something that most of us only see once a year and most have never read it through all the way but everyone knows what is expected when it is mentioned.

I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  As such, two weekends out of the year are unofficial holidays where I lounge around all day listening to church leaders surrounded by those I love most.  Also, the building that is just below this has a special significance to me while people outside of this culture group have no idea what occurs inside.  I go as often as possible and this buildings and those
like as well as what I wear there and what occurs
there are extremely special to me.

I am a citizen of the United States of America.  This flag is a symbol that has special significance for me.  The last Thursday of November is always an excuse to eat a lot of food, the 4th of July means fireworks.  Independence, equality, and freedom are words that are especially charged in our language.  We have patriotic songs that send chills through my body.  Citizens of other countries typically don't experience all of this.

I play the violin and the piano.  The top picture is a picture of one of my favorite piano books in my apartment (partially because it looks AWESOME) and the video is a recording of the last piece I learned with my violin teacher back home before I moved out to Provo.  There are music jokes that I understand, I understand what if feels like to play music and feel it coursing through you and feel in your gut when something goes wrong and how good it feels when you get it right.  These feelings are especially noticeable when I am part of a large musical group and I feel part of a bigger whole.  Every person who has played in a group that I have talked to understands that feeling but those who don't have a hard time with the concept.  Because I am able to
read music, I understand symbols and language that
those outside of the group cannot.

This is my ID badge that I take with me when I do school observations.  It is a very obvious symbol that I am a part of the teaching major culture.  My roommate and I bonded because on move-in day we both had these ID's hanging by our bed.  This culture talks about Bloom's Taxonomy and looks at a classroom, class rules, and class activities a little differently than anyone else.  We talk about things like "Bloom's Taxonomy" and the PRAXIS.  We are a group of students who have decided in our early 20s that we don't care that we won't get a lot of money in this lifetime.  Instead, we tend to value education and helping others more.

In addition to that, I am a Social Science teaching major.  This picture is a picture of some of my textbooks on my shelf.  You'll notice that there is quite the diversity there.  I love learning about humans and how they work and why they do what they do.  I love learning a bit more about how our world works and I much prefer social science to any of the hard sciences.

My grandma bought me this shirt while she was in Ireland to remind me of my heritage.  My extended family is very proud of our heritage and we tell stories from our family history whenever we are together.  These ancestors have given me a place in the white culture, although I do have a few Native American ancestors and ancestors from Africa that I love to claim because it makes me feel more diverse as a person.

I am part of the nerd culture.  One artifact of that is the map of Middle Earth that I have up in my room.  You can's see this in this particular picture but I also have Narnia and Harry Potter in prominent display in my room and an Avengers poster.  While I may not be good at video games (they weren't big in my family), I can talk Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Doctor Who or whatever other nerdy things that come up with complete fluency.  These involve complete worlds and ideologies that might seem foreign to other people and make them feel like an outsider.  Just try being an average person while watching a Star Wars marathon with my friends.

I'm a woman and, although I have gone through a very long tomboy phase, I do now enjoy being feminine.  Although we make up 50% of the world's population, the female culture is quite an exclusive club.  We go through experiences that no guy will understand.  The hair in this picture alone required more time than most guys spend getting ready for church.  In the picture below, you will see that I have pepper spray on my keychain.  This is because, in the female culture, we are taught that we need to protect ourselves against the crazies of this world.  I have asked a guy how often he pays attention to the people walking around him at night or looks in the backseat of his car when he gets in at night.  They typically answer that they never do.  Females are not permitted to think this way.  We are also encouraged to go to certain professions because of our gender.  However, there are definite perks to being a woman because history has dictated that I be spoiled.

There is a definite culture surrounding people who experience mental illness and those who care for them.  I have been surrounded by mental illness my entire life and have had a few episodes myself-- I believe that Heavenly Father gave me just enough that I am able to better help those around me.  Because of this, I understand cues better, I can see through facades better, and I understand about triggers and sensitivity and what a panic attack feels like.  There are words that I understand all too well that I have recently been made aware mean nothing to others.





I'm a heterosexual female who is currently single which means I am totally free to admire the amazing gifts that Heavenly Father has given men in the looks department and sit with my fellow single friends and admire male celebrities during movies.  It's a fun culture to be in for now.

I have siblings and I am the oldest.  This puts me in a culture that allows me to look at other older siblings, roll my eyes, and silently say "Little siblings, am I right?"  I also have an adopted sibling and a guy that might as well be adopted into the family.  None of the boys in this picture are related to me by blood.  The camera-shy one in the back was adopted when he was a few weeks old and I was three.  The kid in the foreground lives on our block.  His mother passed away and his dad has to work a lot and so he has spent most of his growing up in our house, refers to us as sisters and calls my parents "Mom" and "Dad."  We have pictures like this from as far back as when he was six.  Because of this, I am aware that family does not necessarily come from blood and am more willing to adopt others as family.

I am a member of a vegan dinner group but I am not vegan.  This really puts me in a unique culture as I try to decide where I fit in this meat-eating world.  Many friends are vegan but I do not feel the compulsion to be so.  Instead, I largely steer away from meat unless said meat is free or orange chicken from Panda Express (thus the picture on the left).  Thus I am able to speak across several cultures as my vegan dinner group helps me belong to the vegan culture while I can still go to Panda Express with other friends and enjoy myself.



My culture has so many different parts to it.  There is absolutely no part of my life that is not affected by it and I am largely oblivious to it.  There are bits of cultures that I feel I have part in simply by being around so many people who belong to that group.  Unfortunately, what largely helped me identify the various groups I was a part of was to think of what groups I am a part of that other people would not understand.  Largely, I think that my cultures have helped me in school cultures (except possibly in PE classes :) ).  I am part of several cultures that our school system unintentionally caters to.  The only group I am part of that has caused me to feel like I need to fight for myself was the gender group that I am in and then it was not so much from teachers but from other students or the perceptions of others and even then, because I have always been fascinated by history and was drawn toward a profession that has been historically a profession that is approved for women, that wasn't a common problem.

Being the "Other"

The artifact that I had was a "get to know you" bingo but alas miscommunication happens and I no longer have it.  I loved the irony that was represented by that paper because it was supposed to show experiences that we have in common but I left that evening feeling the opposite.  However, BYU recently BYU published a picture that captured a little bit of what I encountered.  

  

For this experience, I went to an event in which I was the only person in the room who had not served a mission.  The group I ended up in was full of people who had served their missions in Europe-- two guys joined our group when theirs went home and they served elsewhere.  However, I have never served a mission and in Provo--especially right now-- this puts me in a culture of my own.  

Notes from this event:

-Oh look, I'm the only one raising my hand.  Everyone look at the weird girl.   Everything anyone ever said to me that was slighting in regards to my not serving a mission came flooding back into my brain.  

-It is so much easier to shut myself off from everyone and just sink into the background 

- People are always forgetting that I am not one of them and I keep having to remind them.  I'm actually really tempted to lie but I know that would backfire like crazy. 

-I do know a little bit about what they are talking about.  I'm not completely clueless.  I just have to remember the mission e-mails I've got from friends.  

-This makes it so much easier for me to just sit on the sidelines.  I've worked hard lately to be able to go outside my comfort zone and I have been making progress but I ended up just sitting on the sidelines because I didn't want to bring any more attention to myself.  

Being the other is really uncomfortable.  According to a recent article published by BYU, 63% of the current student enrollment is returned missionaries now and so I'm not unfamiliar with being a minority in most social events but this one was particularly painful.  I was so grateful when we left and I could blend back in.  I live with roommates who have not served a mission and we have all accepted that going on a mission was not what our Heavenly Father had in store for us.  I have gotten so that I judge people by how they react when I tell them I haven't served a mission.  At first it was perfectly fine.   This opportunity kind of dropped itself into my lap because when I went in, I was not aware that this was going to be an uncomfortable thing.  It was just an FHE at the house of a member of a member of the stake presidency.  However, at the very beginning of his talk, he asked how many people there had served a mission.  When he saw how many hands came up, he amended his question and asked "Who has not served a mission?"  My lone hand went up.  In that moment, I realized that I represented the "other" and so when the opportunity came to stay with them or to go home to my apartment and security, I elected to stay and continue to try to participate in the fun.  The group that ended up with was fun and I had enjoyed it so I thought that it wouldn't be that bad.  I was wrong.  All of the people int he group had come home within the last six months and so their way of relating to other people was through stories from their mission.  I tried to particpate with stories I had heard from others but that can only take me so far and when they started talking about the stores they went to and little things that I could not possibly relate to, I started to fade into the background.  I started having to force myself to participate in the smallest of things.  I tried to steer the conversation towards topics that we had in common but they were constantly forgetting that I didn't know about little things that reminded me that I did not belong.  I had to fish for stories that would allow me to speak their language.  What bothered me most about this experience was how much it affected how I viewed my ability to participate in anything.  I felt like an outsider and so it made it more difficult for me to be willing to make a fool of myself playing basketball or to show off how bad I am at ping pong.  It was the little things that they said that hurt the most and showed me just how much I am outside of my comfort zone.  It is important for me to know, as a teacher, just how debilitating this can be.  I need to be careful about my language and be careful about how I explain things to my students.  It is the little things that can trigger the feelings of being on the outside.  I also need to keep an eye out because I will slip up and I don't want them to sink into themselves or give up ever feeling like they will be part of the group because I know just how much that can affect.