ASSIGNMENT 4

This assignment wasn’t all that interesting to me on the American advertising end because I’m very used to seeing those sorts of adds and I’m well aware of the ideas that portray; however, exploring advertisements from another countries culture was a neat change of pace because I’ve never been exposed to those. Especially considering that those advertisements were from the Japanese culture, which is the country with the biggest advertising industry. I thought it was very interesting to see the contrasting themes in Japanese ads versus Americans ads because they were so innocent and family oriented; a lot of them even put emphasis on being cute and cartoony. It was refreshing to see something like that, however, it also taught me an appreciation for exploring other cultures and how they present the most mundane things.

A photo, unstated or edited, glimpsing the daily life of the Japanese people and the plethora of advertisements they are surrounded by nearly all the time.

ASSIGNMENT 3

I enjoyed this assignment because travel and experiencing different cultures is something I have always passionately strived for in my life and it was nice to see the perspective of someone in similar circumstances to my own achieving that goal because it made it more attainable for me; it was also refreshing to read the perspective of a first-time traveler in my situation as opposed to the perspectives of the large travel blogs that travel for a living. I personally learning a lot about what it’s like to attempt assimilating to a new culture in order to get the full effect of what that location and its people have to offer; that was an amazing insight because, again, that’s generally hard to find. I actually ended up reading more blogs from other students because I was so interesting in knowing their experiences and perspectives. If anything, this assignment taught me more about myself and my desire to see the world that in did about anything specifically related to academics; but it also taught me a lot about the people whose words I was reading, which in and of itself was almost a practice in cultural assimilation and understanding for me- I had to understand the person and then I got to know the culture they were in through their eyes, that was very unique and enjoyable for me.

The nearly 700 articles on the travel locations and world experiences I aspire to visit and have in my lifetime- saved over a period of less than 3 years.

ASSIGNMENT 1

This assignment was interesting to me because it required a type of self-evaluation that I had never formally subjected myself to. So, not only did it offer a chance to learn something about myself that I hadn’t previously given much active thought to, it also offered me a chance to think about myself in objective terms while also assessing the current state of the world in very subjective terms in conjunction with the thoughts on myself. It was a very interesting activity, to say the least. I think that it offered me practical information and explanation on and of the way that I approach different people and cultures that are valuable to my personal growth and social tolerance. I always knew that I was culturally sensitive, but seeing the relatively wide range of cultural sensitivity was eye-opening because I never considered that there were several stages of tolerance and sensitivity (outside of tolerance or not), nor that I could run the spectrum between the high tolerance stages. It certainly provided me with a lot to think about as far as my own identity and my goals for personal growth are concerned.