My Sociological Perspective - Personal Statement Example

A self analysis from a sociological perspective I had been working in Tokyo Japan for four years after my graduation. Being a thrifty saver runs inour family and I was definitely no different. As soon as I got my job, I would live on a minimum possible income and save the rest. For the first couple of years, I saved; I was not saving with anything in mind. I did have some concepts of retirement and saving for a rainy day, but nothing immediate. But then about three years into my job, I really started thinking about going for higher studies in the United States. It was not that I thought their universities were better than ours or their quality of education. I just wanted to experience the culture of the United States. I had been fascinated by American movies since I was a kid and something just clicked. And thanks to the strong Japanese Yen (not good for our exporters, but good for me); I had more than enough funds. So I spent the next year applying to colleges and planning for the next few years in the United States. The big day finally arrived; I took from the Tokyo Airport and landed in Los Angeles Airport. I was very excited. I had meticulously planned everything, my first visit to the United States was nothing like I expected. It was extremely exciting. My housing was already arranged. It was a house, off campus and I had three room mates, one from California, one from Singapore and one from India. It was a most interesting combination and it seemed we had a little U.N. going. My room mates were very helpful. Naresh from India was pursuing his Masters in Engineering; Li Kwon from Singapore was also doing his Phd in Biotechnology. And Chris Adams from San Diego was a fifth year senior pursuing his degree in liberal Arts. I had already arranged for a purchase and pick up of a car before I left from Tokyo. Chris dropped me of at the dealership. Though I had an international driver's license1, I decided against driving the car out of the dealership that day. I took some driving lessons for a week and got accustomed to driving on the opposite side. Having such a varied group of room mates also was a learning experience and various perspectives. I had taken a few cultural orientation classes in Tokyo before coming here, and there was some preparation given to us to expect a few people in the U.S. (a very small minority of people.) who could be xenophobic or racist. It did stick in my mind; however I could not find these xenophobic racist people at the classes I enrolled for and even at the cafeteria where I joined to work a few hours a week. After the first week I wondered if such people existed or if they were relics of a bygone area. I asked my room mates. Naresh said that most people he met held Indians in high regard. One time someone did yell at him out of a driving car when he was trying to cross the road calling him a "camel jockey" which was slightly misplaced racism as that is a derogatory term for Arabs. Lee Kwon said, he definitely did not encounter any. Chris who was a Caucasian said, generally African Americans encountered a lot of racism, but most of it was overt and not too blatant. It was of course illegal to discriminate on race at work or school. But Chris said an over proportionate percent of the African American Population would be arrested or sent to Prison.2 "There is a long and bitter history between blacks and whites in this country" he said. "Perhaps like between us and the Chinese or us and the Koreans". Both Naresh and Chris almost exclaimed at the same time, how can you tell the difference between Chinese, Japanese and a Korean. I was taken slightly aback. I told them that the difference between Japanese and Chinese was like between Night and Day. Chinese tended to have smaller features, while the Japanese had a much redder tinge; the Chinese had more of a yellowish tinge. However one day as I was walking in the park, an older gentleman walked by me and just said "go back jap" I was shocked , this gentleman must have been in his eighties, he lived a couple of blocks down the road. Chris later told me he was a world war two veteran and had lost close friends at the Pearl Harbor. While the explanation helped, I never walked in the park ever again for the fear of running into this gentleman. I have been very non confrontational since I was a small kid and perhaps that is the reason I go out of my way to avoid a conflict. I was teaching Naresh to drive a few months later, and he honked the horn (apparently it is common in India to honk car horns) and I was so embarrassed, he of course apologized, but I was getting concerned about my extreme reaction to perhaps normal life events. On a more interesting note as the months went by I had a chance to compare cultural notes between both Lee and Naresh. It was interesting how both regarded the future. Lee was looking forward to going back to Singapore in a year and a half, While Naresh was looking to get a job here and eventually get his permanent residency of the United States. It was such a contrast. It bought me thinking on how I felt about the United States. I liked the Country and my experiences were mostly fun and my living accommodations were much bigger, but I had not even considered moving from Japan. I later did some study on immigration patterns and I found out that while India exhausted a years worth of U.S work visas (65,000) in the first day itself. Singapore did not even use its entire quota over a whole year3. Perhaps it was the comparative levels of development, but with India's fast growing economy it seemed that there would be a lot more opportunities there. I asked Naresh, and he said while that may be true, it would probably take another 10 or 15 years before that would be the overall trend. But he did mention that quite a few Indians were looking to go back, something unthinkable a few years back. There were not a lot of Japanese students on campus and I was not looking particularly for them, after all I came to the United States to meet new people. But it was interesting to notice how different cultures behaved. The Chinese all hung out together, and there even was a little town called Chinatown where most Chinese found a place to live. The Indians, though there were a lot of them, were more individualistic and were more keen to assimilate into the mainstream, perhaps because they were that much more comfortable. One day , I was waiting on the campus in the Student Lounge , a student I had never met before stopped by and started talking and in a little while invited me for a community dinner . I stopped by that evening. It was a nice dinner. They were a religious group called Jehovah's witnesses and they wanted me to consider joining their group. I was a Buddhist by religion and not particularly a spiritual person and of course religious conversion was not one of my goals when I came here. I did study some of the literature they gave me and found out according to them very few people could go to heaven4. They did call me regularly to come to more meetings and I always avoided them, after a while they finally stopped to my relief. My overall experience in the United States has been a positive one, and there are new things which I am learning all the time and I hope that continues despite a few aberrations here and there. Read More