Fun.

My experience in the writing center so far has been somewhat eye opening. I feel as though I am going through culture shock. What I mean by this is that I am surrounded and in contact with a very wide variety of people. All the different opinions and point of view are really quite surprising, and in a way, I feel like I have been opened up to a broader view of the world. This sounds very vague, but I intend for it to be, as the very things that I have learned in the past weeks are also.

Culture boundaries are by far the most interesting thing that I have observed. I find it amazing that where you are from can decide how you write. Perhaps the reason I find this so facinating is because I have always believed that writing is a universal ability, meaning that the only factor that would change your writing style is your personality. In a way, my assumptions are correct, but I realize that have I missed a fundemental aspect of perasonality: it can be affected by the culture that surrounds you. This new way of viewing how “foreign” people communicate has really cleared up a lot of confusion that I undergo in my other job. As a retail employee, I constantly have people trying to barter with me, and for the longest time, I had no idea why. Now that I understand that is considered rude not to barter in their culture, I feel as if I have been unessisarily rude to a small group of people. With this new knowledge, I can properly handle such situations in the future.

This is just a brief description of something that I have learned, but I think it would be excessive, and maybe a bit of a spoiler, if I were to state all of the things that a person can learn by spending 3 weeks in the writing center.