School Writing

Interview Report

Culture, Nationality, and Identity influence a person a lot. Many people don't believe so, but it does. The culture you live in, influences how you act, and tells you what is acceptable or not. Of course, parents have a say in this as well. Nationality is what country you come from. In certain countries, there are certain laws. I met three Australians recently, and corn syrup is illegal in their country. When they came here, they were shocked to see a gallon bottle of it in America! As for Identity? People have many. Your Identity can be the son of so and so or a Christian. It could be your occupation, and so forth. This is why these three simple things are such an impact!

Nithi is a 30ish-year-old woman who came from Thai. The Interview was set up by the facilitators for us to practice for the interview we'd conduct ourselves. The interview took place in the global classroom (117) where we asked the questions that we had made and assigned. Megan recorded the notes both on a document and voice recorder. So we could use it for later. Five things I found interesting; was what she was extremely open to new Ideas. I loved hearing the stories about her traveling. Her stories about studying abroad, I was greatly interested in too. I liked the part where she explained how she came to America with her husband. Why she came here as well...

Ahmed is a 13-year-old boy from Egypt. He's very kind and loves animals. We met over wizard101 by another friend on skype. We've done video calls before in a group chat with 15+ people, most people from Canada and Eastern the United States, along with him and a European. As for how it was arranged, I just asked him if he'd do an interview for a school project, and he said sure. Some things I found interesting was that there wasn't as much bullying there as there is here, the similarities in some food we have here, that he's never traveled outside his country, and that he doesn't like spicy food! I just find this funny because he's Egyptian and that has a huge variety of spicy food all over. It's also interesting that he said the language influenced him more than his religion...

Both are surprised at how bullying is on another level here, and both like to try new things. Ahmed hasn't traveled outside his country yet, and they both speak multiple languages, however, Ahmed is still in school learning how to speak them fluently, and instead of Thai, English, Spanish, German, he speaks English, Arabic, French. It's very interesting to see different perspectives, and learn different things about other cultures and people, to get their views on life.

Culture, nationalism, and identity all influence each other, as well as every individual person. The culture your influences how proud you are of your country- which is nationalism. Nationalism, depending on how much you love your country, can influence your identity. Even if you have low nationalism for your country, you're still an American, or an Egyptian. That can't change because it's where you were born. If you don't like how things are running in your country you can always try to find a way to change them.