SDLC 105: Learning Journal #5

[David Kim]

When my family moved from South Korea to the United States, we experienced a lot of culture shocks. From the way schools were run to the way people acted; everything was totally different from where we had come from. My parents, being older than I am and having been more accustomed to the Korean culture back home, struggled to find their niche in the States. They ended up finding a similar immigrant Korean community and merging in with them. As for me, I was forced to be put in to challenging situations like at school where everyone was speaking English and had different mannerisms than I did; I was forced to adapt and learn to assimilate or become like the rest of the Americans. Adding on to the challenge was that I was only an insecure middle school kid when I had to go through the challenge so there was definitely added pressure to assimilate. It took me a while but I absorbed the subtle differences in the nuances and mannerisms and was able to fit in to a point where unless I explicitly tell people, people usually can't tell that I grew up in South Korea. It was definitely a tough and long learning process.