Cultural Immersion and Self-Reflection Essay

Cultural Immersion and Self-Reflection Essay Order Description Cultural immersion is a matter of getting out of our limited environment and into the world around us. The Cultural Immersion Experience has several objectives: first, it gives you the opportunity to learn about a culture different from your own by becoming involved. Second, it gives you the opportunity to understand better and empathize with those who are different from you. Third, it provides you the opportunity to reflect on, and become aware of attitudes and beliefs that you may have about a group that is different from yourself. Fourth, it allows you to make practical use of the theoretical knowledge that you will gain in this course. You will actively participate in one cultural, community, or personally novel event over the course of the month. Your experience is to last a minimum of three hours, during which time you should be engaged in, participating, or contributing in some way to the event, festivity, service, or activity that is happening around you. Examples are: attend a Buddhist Temple (for a person who is not Buddhist), or a Russian Orthodox or Greek Orthodox church; volunteer in a community that is different from your own; attend a local culture festival that takes place within the course month; take a brief sign language course (deaf culture); interact with diverse groups of local people for an organized event; if Christian, attend services of another faith; go with a friend of another culture to his or her family celebration, such as a quinceañera; or, attend a cooking class that is representative of a culture or ethnicity distinct from yours. These are only a few ideas to stimulate your thinking. Be creative in your selection. After the experience you will write a paper in which you: a) describe your encounter with a diverse population; b) what you learned; c) what the experience was like for you; d) discuss ways in which your experience correlates with the course related materials (e.g., course readings, discussions, key terms and phenomena, assignments, and lectures); and, e) discuss the implications of a multicultural world on contemporary life and life in the workplace as examined from this new lens as facilitated by your experience. I am looking for a solid paper that summarizes your experiences, and that also critically analyzes the intersection of your life’s experiences with the new ones you had during your “field trip”. You should be able to strongly support your paper with technical jargon from the course along with drawing comparisons or contrasting with many of the theories and cultural phenomena discussed in the book. If you don’t find similarities, that is ok, but you are still responsible for providing a solid paper that discusses the cultural departures and divides in a scholarly way with a lot of support from your sources. This paper should flow like a narrative, but should also be a critical analysis and research paper.