Looking into Personal Space

In the boiling pot of America most people have been asked “what are you?” when referring to one’s race or nationality. In the short story “Borders” by Thomas King he explores one of the many difficulties of living in a world that was stripped from his race. In a country that is as diverse as North America, culture and self-identity are hard to maintain. King’s short story “Borders” deals with a conflict that I have come to know well of. The mother in “Borders” is just in preserving her race and the background of her people. The mother manages to maintain her identity that many people lose from environmental pressure.

Moreover, the basis of a relationships lies on the principle that it is a shared give and take between two people. Yet, what happens in a society that has slowly eradicated a person’s ability to question their surroundings and communication has been dumbed down to surface level discussions?

Throughout our lives, everyone that we share bonds with and interact with on a regular basis, either forms or has some sort of influence on our identity. Consequently, the majority of us naturally find ourselves striving to fit in with these people, especially during the tough transition from childhood to adulthood. It is this part of the human condition that makes us feel as though we must forge ties with something outside of ourselves in order to establish a strong sense of existence and a clear understanding of who we are. Although most individuals are able to make these connections with others naturally, others who stray from the social norm might not be so fortunate, but rather than

Throughout “Arts of the Contact Zone”, Pratt uses many real life situations to exemplify how contact zones create conflict and separate people and cultures; but she also examines ways to use the contact zone to our advantage in order to unify society. Sometimes people are led believe their differences are too great to overcome, so they remain isolated from the rest of society. People shouldn’t be trying to isolate themselves, but rather incorporating their culture into the community around them. This incorporation of cultures can often cause conflict, but Pratt explains that conflict can be avoided if people abandon their biases and pursue knowledge about the cultures around them. This idea “will read very differently” to people on opposing sides of the contact zone

The family I grew up in has been by far the largest influence on how I think, and they have taught me many great things and have been amazing parents, however in this essay I will focus on how my views have differed from theirs, and how I have learned to think differently. My mother is a small town in the middle of nowhere Oklahoma, and my father is from San Antonio, Texas. I have two sisters, one who is eight years old than myself, the other is two and a half years younger. I was born part of the middle class, white, and I 'm a male. Born in Dallas, Texas I 've spent the vast majority of my life in Frisco, Texas. The entirety of my childhood was spent growing up in a Southern Baptist Christian home. From a young age I was taught in church, which I attended for preschool, that an “acceptable” family is a mother and a father with children. This traditional family model was the setting in which I was raised, so I didn 't realize for a long time that

Where one grows up affects their lifestyle and character; one’s surroundings shape his or her outlook on the world. Many people always say when growing up in the city one will be used to a diverse, hasty going, and exhilarating life; while growing up in the country one will be used to a deliberate, steadier, and bucolic life. Although moving to Mississippi was a dramatic alteration, I can explicitly acknowledges the menaces–death, robberies, and fights–encountered growing up in the city. Therefore, moving to the south may have been a better alternative involving my physical well-being, regardless of the many emotional struggles. Moving down south to Mississippi from Illinois showed me the struggles of coping with racism and prejudice people,

Born in California and raised in the deep south, I grew up in two conflicting societies. The cultural geography of both areas differs on a magnitude of levels and complicated my development into the cultures around me, however in retrospect influenced me to be a multidimensional and considerate person. At a young age my parents introduced me to progressive values. During the developmental toddler stages, I immersed myself in two different cultures: what I experienced at school and what I experienced at home. Charleston, South Carolina embodies small-town society though the Greater Charleston Area expands rapidly each year, pulling migrants, including my family, to the growing city. The overwhelmingly conservative views of Traditional Charleston

Being American means many things to many different people.Being in America,I think that our main focus is on freedom.While this is a good point,there are many other things that could be focused on.Perhaps one focus could be like what life is like in countries and how privileged we really are to have these freedoms.Many Americans also overlook the fighting and protest that it took to get to where we are as a society now.People now that have been born with these rights think nothing of them as they are a given to us since birth.Also,any rights that people do lack that might even be the smallest inconvenience people react in extreme ways.This just goes to show how unappreciative of our given rights we are.

The American South, known for its religious patriotism stemming from its profoundly unique culture that has evolved through dozens of generations. Southerners are stereotypically depicted within subcultures, ranging from agricultural to soul, that typically define their personalities. Like many, my personal perspective has been facilitated by the environment in which I was raised; growing up in the affluent city of Brentwood, Tennessee, my rearing was bubbled by the expansive south. It wasn’t till recently, when I my fundamental ideologies were challenged by arguments created from facts and evidence that I began to sympathize with differing attitudes. My prior rational trailed behind strongly conceived emotions that stuck to stereotypically

According to Paatjes and Shwartz(1993) personal space is an invisible barrier that humans extend around themselves which they like to keep others from entering. The

Being individuals, we're driven to live together. We can't help but feel like by being in the same building that we're also in the same family. This is not true. Someone from the other side of my building would no more help me move- or

“The Contact Zone”, is defined by Mary Louis Pratt as “the space in which transculturation takes place – where two different cultures meet and inform each other, often in highly asymmetrical ways.” Pratt describes what she calls ‘contact zones’ and elaborates on the pros and cons of these cultural interactions. She sees the contact zone as a place that allows people to exchange cultural ideas and break down the dividing cultural borders. When a contact zone is started, people are able to interact on new levels gaining a new perspective because they are able to collaborate with people from foreign cultures. If you are always with people of the same culture as you, you become used to hearing everything from the same perspective. With a

People begin to feel isolated by friends and family if they say and/or do something that is not following cultural

Entering an individual’s home or personal space can reveal to you differences in that individual’s personality and nature that you previously were unaware of, and can influence you to perceive him or her in a new light. However, what you perceive about this person can be affected by a multitude of variables, some of which may steer you into making erroneous assumptions about certain personality traits. Fortunately, Sam Gosling has documented the important factors necessary for interpreting people’s stuff and its arrangement in their rooms, offices, and various other living and habitable spaces, even turning this “snooping” into a science to determine where each individuals may fall on the spectrum of particular personality traits concerning the Big Five: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Snoop: What your stuff says about you explains what cues, quirks, and distractions, all referred to as behavioral residue, to be conscious and wary of when examining an individual’s room. After being exposed to this material and putting it into action, my results revealed a somewhat accurate interpretation, after observing and peeping around two rooms, her bathroom and briefly the living room, of the individual’s perception of herself revealed in her trait self assessment.

 (Fisher, 2007). Social settings and educational settings, professional settings and home settings can all be very different environments and different behaviors can be exhibited in each environment. An individual is most likely to interact differently in a social setting of close friends than they would in a professional setting of