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Microcosms of American Culture 🍔🍕🏅🏈🎓🏥 - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Anecdotal Testimony
        The competitive American life started for me when I was only three years old. It was then that I first started sports, specifically soccer tee-ball, and when I started preschool. When I was out on the field, my parents would tell me to work hard, do my best, and "kick butt." I was out there to have fun, but I was also there to win. When I was in school, my teachers rewarded answering questions, learning vocabulary words, reading new books, and excelling in mathematics. In preschool, the best in these areas were awarded with stickers and ice-cream. In high school, we want to be valedictorian, or student-body president, or stand-out civilian both so that colleges will take us and because it is what we have been trained to do. Once we get to college, we have to have the best GPA and get the best internships so that we can enter the work field. And when we finally get jobs, we even have to compete in those, whether that be against our colleagues for a raise, against other businesses for who will have the most customers or best productivity rates, or even as Americans battling other countries, trying to be the best in the world. The entire American system, from our culture (Superbowl), lifestyle (education), and economy (free enterprise) revolves around competition, and this competitive atmosphere not only allows us to become better individuals but is also what provides growth and fosters positive change for our country as a whole.
      - Anecdotal Exception
        While the competitive lifestyle is great for allowing and fostering growth, it can also create an atmosphere of stress and frustration that can become toxic and do more harm than good. On a small level, this can be seen with high school students. At the moments, I am juggling five high school classes (one of which is AP level) and a college class, as well as two jobs, college applications and scholarships, sports, and a social life. I am not the only one--many of my friends and classmates are trying to earn an associated degree on top of their classes and extracurriculars. We are all trying to compete with one another and make ourselves suitable applicants for college so we can have what we perceive to be successful lives. It is quite stressful, and results in an inadequate amount of sleep (I probably average about 4 hours per night during the school week) and burnout (AKA señoritis). In the end, we become less productive and exhausted, and if this carries on into the workplace, where we will also have to add more responsibilities, bills, a collapsing housing market, and a possibly disastrous economy (depending on how we continue to handle COVID) to our already full place, we as people may suffer and our economic system may suffer with us.
  - - - Anecdotal Testimony
        As I grow older and become exposed to more people from other cultures and ethnicities, I have learned to respect and love these differences between people in our nation. I went to a summer camp a couple years ago, and I felt as if it was truly my first exposure to multiple cultures, and I loved it. There were several POC in attendance and I had the privilege to become friends with one of them. One of my best friends at that camp was Hindu, and she talked to me her religion and festivals and visiting her family in India. I fell in love with her culture and it ignited in me the will to learn more about people and cultures all around the world. I know I'm not the only one--many of my friends have strived to learn about and accept other cultures, and it is a trend I see my generation heading towards. We want to learn more about and truly respect other cultures in ways our ancestors never even considered.
      - Anecdotal Exception
        Unfortunately, not everyone I know is so accepting of people who look different or are part of other cultures. Growing up in a small town in the south, I have met many closed minded people, and even on the internet there are many people who loudly voice their animosity towards these people and their cultures. America is full of BIPOC and even though I see more and more acceptance of these people and their beliefs and ways of life, I still see a lot of prejudice and hostility from those who call themselves "Patriots" and "true Americans," (as if we as white people were really the first ones here rather than the Native Americans who we attempted to wipe out). It is a sad thing to see, but I can't even begin to imagine what it must be like to experience this hatred as a BIPOC. But like I said in my testimony, I have hope in my generation and the generations after that we will educate ourselves and fall in love with diversity and the people who make America all the more colorful and beautiful.
- - - - Anecdotal Testimony I've been to the doctor many times in my lifetime--from checkups to flu tests, from the orthodontist to the allergist, my parents have invested a lot of money into my appointments and into the medicines I need. I have seen them struggle with insurance and what it will and won't cover. I have seen my mother decide whether the off-brand medicine would work as well for a lower price. I also know that I am one of the lucky ones. Many people can't afford health care like my family can. Some people don't have insurance because it's too expensive, or there insurance won't cover the specific medicine or care they need. They can't afford hospital visits or mental health services, and so they go about their day in more pain than anyone should be in. I am lucky; my parents can afford the health care that I need, unlike many people in America.
      - Anecdotal Exception
        When exploring the original website, in which we can compare living in the U.S. to living in other countries, I noticed that many countries payed much more for health care than we do, but I also wondered whether some of these countries even offered health care, or if their health care offered as much as ours. In Afghanistan, people spend an average of 99.42% money on health care, but according to the following article, in Afghanistan "Obtaining the most basic of necessities – food, shelter and clothing – is a constant struggle [...] There is a critical shortage of health care workers at every level. Healthcare facilities are in urgent need of restoration. There are inadequate supplies of medicines, vaccines, equipment and fuel. An estimated 6 million people have no access, or insufficient access to health care." So even though health care is expensive in America compared to many countries, that may be, in some cases, because we offer more services, and therefore looking at these statistics alone without any further research can be a little misleading.
        http://apps.who.int/disasters/repo/7543.doc#:~:text=After%2023%20years%20of%20conflict,very%20poorest%20in%20the%20world.&text=There%20is%20a%20critical%20shortage,in%20urgent%20need%20of%20restoration.
  - - - Anecdotal Testimony
        I have many relatives in prison right now, mostly for drugs, and I also have a relative who has a warrant out for his arrest in another state. I know many people whose parents are in the prison system. I do not know if this is just because of where we live, or if this is the story of people around the United States. Considering how high our incarceration rates are, the latter is likely. I do not quite know why our incarceration rights are so high, though I recently watched part of a documentary on Netflix called 13th that gives insight into the disproportionate rates of black people incarcerated, the criminalization of drugs, and the way corporations have taken over the prison system.
      - Anecdotal Exception
        I personally have never been to jail and neither has anyone in my immediate family. Also, from what the article says, the incarceration rate in America is dropping, though very slowly.
- - - - Anecdotal Testimony
        Growing up, I believed that America was the greatest country. We were taught in school about the brave men who fought for freedom and built a country in which everyone would be created equal and be free. I believed that we had never lost a war, and that as the world's melting pot that we were the most culturally diverse and accepting country in the world. I was even made to write patriotic essays about why America was so great. Maybe I was ignorant, maybe I was misguided, but the older I have gotten the more I have seen through these misconceptions and the less certain I am of America's greatness. In later history classes, and through my own research, I have found disturbing things in our history. Our country has been built on the graves of the Native Americans we exploited in order to gain their lands. It is founded on the principle that "all men were created equal," but the men who wrote that premise were slave owners. Our nation has gained territories through imperialism and unnecessary ware fare--just look at the story of how we overthrew the Hawaiian Queen and took her land, and then later approbated and americanized the culture of the natives there. The Vietnam war was an utter disaster, and I'm not too convinced of the necessity of our recent wars in the middle east. We memorialize 9/11, and yes, it was truly tragic and those lives should be honored each and every year, but we neglect to mention that Japan memorializes the day we dropped a bomb on the people in Hiroshima, killing 80,000. We as Americans are brought up to believe that America is the greatest country, and we are taught little about other countries and cultures (we study world history for a semester in high school and American history for an entire year, and our world history focuses mainly on Europe).We even call our country America and ourselves Americans as if we alone are entitled to the name of an entire two-continental system. The United States is great country, but I do not believe we should ignore the horrible acts we have committed in the past, or even in recent history, nor should we neglect the study of other countries and cultures (after all, global studies is not integrated into our required curriculum).
        https://apnews.com/297f4ec3e5cb2337b48b12c7e4b06dc0
        https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/american-bomber-drops-atomic-bomb-on-hiroshima#:~:text=On%20August%206%2C%201945%2C%20the,and%20another%2035%2C000%20are%20injured.
      - Anecdotal Exception
        This class is the exception. We are being taught about other cultures and how to respect them. As said in the youtube video, the more we learn about other countries, the less smug we become about ours. And as information has become accessible at the tips of our finger tips, I have known many others who have done research into our own and into other countries. People in the United States are starting to realize that our country has made mistakes, and we have caused pain to many people in and outside of our country. But just because we acknowledge our nations faults and think outside of the "America is the Greatest" ideal that we have been taught does not mean we are not still patriots. In fact, I believe the best patriots are those who love their country despite its faults and actively fight to better the country and give more and better opportunities to the people that country has hurt.
  - - - Anecdotal Testimony
        Education is huge in American culture. Most kids begin school at 3 or 4 years old, and they spend 9-10 months in school every year until they graduate high school. From there, we are told that the best way to be successful is the pay tens of thousands of dollars each year for post-secondary education--the more education we get, the more successful we become. In America, education equals opportunity. I know many people who have graduated college at different levels, and the pattern that I have found is that those with a Master's degree of PhD typically earn more money than those with an Associate or Bachelor's degree. It is also much easier to get a good job or ones "dream job" with a college degree than without. For this reason, it is instilled in students from a young age that college is the way to success.
      - Anecdotal Exception
        When we are very little we are placed into college-readiness programs, and we are constantly told the importance of a college education by adults to the point where it scares many of us to do anything else. It seems like college is our only option if we ever want to have a good life, and that we must go to college straight after high school--but this is not always the case. There is a future for many Americans in the work force straight after high school, or even without a high school degree, and many of these people are happy with their lives. My dad enlisted in the Navy straight out of high school, and therefore didn't go to college to earn his Associate degree until four years after high school. Success is defined by each individual person, and many feel as successful without a college degree and those who have earned a PhD. College is not the right path for everyone, and it is not the only path to opportunity. Education is a great thing to have in this country, and it opens a lot of doors, but many Americans are content learning through real life experience than from a textbook.
- - - - Anecdotal Testimony
        Americans are very friendly, especially in the small southern everyone-knows-everyone community that I have grown up in. When you see someone out in public, you smile, and if you recognize the person you may even ask them about their day. But the conversation is just a quick superficial exchange: "How are you?" "Good! How are you?" "Good!" Even if you are not good, you do not burden that near stranger or acquaintance with how you are really feeling. You simply keep to the script, smile, and move on. I can easily see how this would be frustrating for foreigners who are used to more in depth conversations with friends, not the American exchange that, like most things American, seems rushed. Sometimes so rushed that the other person, when walking by and asking "How are you?" Walks by without waiting for your answer and doesn't reply to your question in turn (this is one of my pet peeves!).
        There is also a loose definition for "friend" in America. I personally would consider many people to be my friend, including classmates who I only ever talk to in school. These are not necessarily people I would choose to hang out with on my own time, just people who are nice and easy to talk to when we are together. Because of this loose definition, I have a group of people who I consider to be my "close friends" or "best friends." These are the people I keep in contact with no matter what, the people who have my back and who I will always be there for, the people who I genuinely love hanging out with in my free time. I guess for people in other countries, this is what the definition for "friend" is.
      - Anecdotal Exception
        While my experience in my hometown has been very peachy, this is not always the case in larger cities. When I visited New York last winter, you did not see many people smiling as they past you down the street. I never thought these people were rude, I could just tell that they were simply too worried about moving from one place to another to initiate in a friendly exchange with all the hundreds of people passing by, and expecting this would be quite unrealistic. You might get a few smiles in a small coffee shop, but for the most part, everyone just goes about their day not worrying about simple pleasantries--and why would they when they probably don't recognize anyone from the sea of people anyways.
        In terms my day-to-day experience, most Americans I know are peaches, though I have met many coconuts. There are Americans who are very genuine; they won't smile unless they have a reason, they don't care for small talk, and it takes a while to break their outer shell, but once you do, you have made a lifelong friend. One example of this is my best friend Maryanne. She is not one for small talk, and therefore when she accepts you into her inner circle, conversations with her are never boring. In fact I would probably say that my closest friends are probably the coconuts--they may not always smile as you pass on the street, but they will cut up with their friends and get into deep conversations that feel so genuine.
  - - - Anecdotal Testimony
        It is not hard to see why people in other countries would believe the stereotype that Americans are fat. A large portion of our culture revolves around fast food, and as we become busier and busier, so it seems that we have less time to exercise or make heathy meals. Because of this, we probably have more meat/fat on our bones than is considered normal elsewhere. Though I myself do not struggle too much with my weight, I know many who do, and it is really hard in American culture for some to maintain what is considered a healthy weight.
      - Anecdotal Exception
        Though this stereotype is quite understandable, it does not at all hold true for all Americans. I know many people who have never struggled with their weight, or have actually struggled with being underweight rather than obese. There are many people in America who practice healthy lifestyles: going on daily jogs or walks, eating home cooked, nutritious meals, and practicing good eating habits throughout the day. Like one boy said in the original video, this stereotype may have been born due to the extremes in weight in America. There are people at dangerously obese levels just as there are people who are dangerously underweight. But for the most part, most people I know are at a healthy weight or are just slightly overweight--so not quite the level of obesity that many foreigners may expect.