myintrovertedlife

This week I started a graduate class called Intercultural Training.  The purpose of this course is to prepare us to be able to develop and to provide training for intercultural communications in different areas such as education, non-profit, and corporate businesses.  I’m taking this as a course to prepare me for an international career.  In the Fall of this year, I will start taking courses for a graduate degree in Spanish Translation.

Our first exercise is to share four cultural identities that define us.  From the four cultural identities we choose, we need to pick one identity and explain positive and negative experiences associated with that identity.  The exercise is meant for us to dig deep and to reflect on our own personal cultural experiences.

I don’t think that digging deep will be a problem for me  because I’m an introspective person.  I’m just not sure how much of this process I want to share with my classmates.  I don’t know them and we haven’t established trust with one another.  Trust, empathy, and understanding are needed when dealing with cultural experience because issues of race, ethnicity, social class, religion, gender, and sexuality can arise.   Not everyone has the ability to deal with these issues in a sensitive manner.  I hope that the fact that all of the other students are interested in intercultural communication will mean that people will be civil to one another.

Tagged: blogging, challenge, education, Empathy, graduate degree, intercultural, intercultural communication, postaday2011, postaweek2011, sensitivity, Spanish Translation, training