My Culture Shock

The most interesting lecture that I found from Adriane Stoner lecture was culture shock. When I was younger I went to Vietnam with my family. At first I thought it was cool and awesome that I could travel, since it was my first time out of the country. For the first few weeks I enjoyed Vietnam, just like what Adriane Stoner said. When Adriane Stoner talked about culture shock she talked about how people usually enjoy their first few weeks in a new place. That what happen to me. I enjoyed the new sight and sound that I was seeing in my first few weeks in Vietnam. However as Adriane Stoner explain after the “honeymoon stages” is over it goes downhill. After being in Vietnam for a few weeks I started to get home sick. Even though I was with my family I started to miss my friends and my home. Back then I had no way to communicate with my friends since there really wasn’t any internet café in Vietnam. When Adriane Stoner talked about how people would deal with this, she mention that they would go to café bar or use some form of technology to get in contact with people from back home. I did not do these, and it made things worst.

            Part of me wishes that I could experience the full culture shock. What I mean by this is that when I went to Vietnam I was with my family. I wonder what it would have been like if I didn’t have my family with me. Having my family there lessen my culture shock just by a little. I could not imagine what Adriane Stoner when through. Not only do I wish that I did not go with my family, I wish that I stayed a little longer. Adriane Stoner talks about what happen after you downhill. She mention after a while you will go back up hill. I wonder what it would have been like when I would go up hill in my culture shock. Maybe one day I can experience what that feels like.

The Art of Storytelling

In Professor Barnhurst’s lecture, he talks about the art of storytelling and all of the elements that it contains. At the beginning of the lecture, Professor Barnhurst decides to start a group activity by making the whole class partner up with other classmates. Between the two partners, they had to tell a story to each other while the other one takes notes about the story. After 5 minutes, the roles change and the activity is repeated. When the activity ends, Professor Barnhurst chose 2 groups, consisting of 4 people, and made them compare the notes that they took. Professor Barnhurst wanted to see what was similar and what was contrasting with all the stories that were being told. As the activity finished, Professor Barnhurst would go more in-depth with the elements of storytelling.

The lecture of Professor talks about multiple things that we learned in class. The most important component is effective communication. When people are telling a story it is a form of communication. While listening to a story, people must understand it as they do with the regular, everyday communication. Thinking of when Professor Barnhurst talks about the elements of storytelling, it reminds me of what I learned in my marketing class. Like in marketing, the businessman is trying to communicate or persuade its consumer to buy his or her product. Being more persuasive means that your consumer is more likely to buy your product. You need to communicate to tell your story in the best possible way. Storytelling with the correct use of its elements can go hand-in-hand with many things around us.

            The last thing that Professor Barnhurst’s lecture talks about, something we also learned in-class, is note taking. At the very beginning of the lecture when Professor Barnhurst’s made everyone pair up, they had to take notes of each other’s stories. I, once again, start to think about the time in class when we talked about note taking. When we talked about Intro, Literature Review, Methods, Result, Discussion, and Conclusion, it all dealt with the same thing: Note taking. While listening to the stories being told to them, people try to get the most important things down in their notes. To better yourself in note taking, you could as easily read the first sentence in each paragraph get a better understanding of the story. Doing this will also help you take more efficient, faster, and better notes.

Views on Vietnamese Women

Professor Bui lectured about her research about the view of Vietnamese women. Being part Vietnamese this topic captured my interest because I have a totally different view on Vietnamese women than other people.

Professor Bui lectured about a lot of things we learned in class like stereotypes and framing. The first thought when people mention a Vietnamese woman is that they were prostitutes and submissive. Professor Bui really brought this stereotype out when she talked about her experiences in Vietnam. Men would try to solicit sex out of her and degrade her. This surprised me because what I’ve grown up knowing about Vietnamese women is entirely different from what other people think about Vietnamese women. I grew up learning the positive stereotypes of Vietnamese women from my Vietnamese parents. Some of the positive stereotypes that I learned was that they were hard worker, and very respectful. The negative stereotypes that Professor Bui mentions, I didn’t learn until I start going to school or hanging out with my other white friends. My mom who grew up during the Vietnam War had a different outlook on Vietnamese women and she passed those outlooks onto me. She would briefly mention the horror of the Vietnam War but she would never mention the negative stereotypes of Vietnamese women. Instead she would just keep mentioning that they were hard worker and very respectable people, trap in a time of war. So I was surprised when I first found out that there were negative stereotypes on Vietnamese woman.

Another thing that we learned in class the Professor Bui was talking about is framing. All of movies that Professor Bui mention or talked about dealt with Vietnamese women being prostitute during the Vietnam War and would have sex with the American soldiers. Professor Bui talked about how the soldiers would have wives at home but they would often come to Vietnam to sleep with the prostitute. The movies gave the American people the frame of which they thought of Vietnamese women. When American thinks of Vietnamese Women they not only think about the negative stereotypes but also their framing which was help with the media. The media did not mention any positive stereotypes of Vietnamese women. They only focus on them being prostitute which made it salience. So when most people mention Vietnamese woman they would automatic think that they are prostitutes and submissive because of their framing.

Professor Rojecki Lecture

Professor Rojecki in this lecture talked about the loss of jobs in America, The Tea Party Movement, our economic, and how the younger generation doesn’t follow the news as much as they should be. This lecture was really interesting to me since I love politics and I am a business major so I love anything that has to do with business.

One of the things that Professor Rojecki talked about that got my interest was the jobs loses in America. When he asked who has an Apple products a lot of people raised their hand. When he went on to explained that those Apple products were made in China because it was being outsource for its cheap labor, I wonder what the class expression was like. A lot of Americans didn’t realize that what they were buying was made in another country being employed by non-Americans. I’m not saying that a bad thing but when our unemployment is high we should take a stand with these companies and say that they should employ Americans. If we would have done that our unemployment rate wouldn’t have been so high, and maybe the “Great Recession”, as they call it, wouldn’t have been so bad since you would be giving jobs to American consumers. With the money these American consumers got they could reinvested it in the economy by buying things that could create more jobs in America.

Another thing I found interesting was when Professor Rojecki talked about how the younger generations doesn’t follow the news as much as they should be. When he asked the class who followed the news on a daily basic and knew what was going on around the world, only a hand full of people raised their hands. This surprised me a lot and is pretty sad. Being part of the younger generation we should know what is going on in the world. We are a leading force when it comes to elections time. President Obama won the election because of the younger generation. He inspired the young voter and those young voters in return voted for him. As Professor Rojecki if we don’t follow the news we we will listen to someone else take on the news instead of ours. Professor Rojecki also mentions that when we watch the news we usually watch whatever channel agrees with our political views. This is not surprising since most of us don’t like people challenging our beliefs, and we like to think we are right about most things.

Tony L