I come from a Hispanic background. My grandfather moved from Cuba to the United States when he was seventeen years old and eventually became a doctor after many years of hard work. His first language is Spanish, but unfortunately my mother didn’t learn enough from him or on her own to be able to teach my sister and me as children. I’ve always felt a little disconnected from that side of my family due to my lack of Spanish speaking abilities as well as the distance from my Spanish speaking relatives, so I’ve placed great importance on continuing to try to learn it throughout my life. I took Spanish almost every semester in high school, minored in it in college, became the secretary of USC’s Spanish Honors Society, and studied abroad in Spain. In addition to going on exchange, I volunteered at an after-school program for Hispanic children to further try to immerse myself and become more culturally connected. I’ve had to work hard to understand even the little bit of culture that I do understand today, and interacting with completely bilingual elementary school children made me realize that total immersion is the best way to learn a culture. Consequently, in Madrid, I immersed myself in a group of native Spaniards and learned more about Spanish culture in my Consumer Insights class.

 

Spanish and the Hispanic culture have always been interesting to me, and I think it’s because I’ve always been on the outside looking in. It’s supposed to be my culture, but I didn’t grow up that way, which is why it was interesting for me to volunteer at Pineview Elementary School, which has a high Hispanic population. The first semester, I helped a few children one-on-one to improve their language skills and then helped in a classroom with students’ classwork. The second semester, I volunteered at the school’s after-school program for Hispanic children, helping with homework and test corrections. Spending time with these kids helped me feel a little more connected to my own heritage by observing their cultural norms and getting to know Hispanic individuals on a more personal level.

 

In Spain, spending time with local Spaniards from my class was a similar experience to working with Hispanic children in that I was immersed in a culture and could observe it while getting to know people better. However, the experience was also slightly different because these young adults seemed to struggle a bit with English, while the elementary school children were completely bilingual. This observation made it clear that one will learn a language much better when fully immersed, as exemplified by the bilingual Hispanic children living in an English speaking country.

 

In my Consumer Insights class, we were given an assignment where we had to get into the minds of consumers. We worked with an American drink company to expound upon growth groups (groups of specific people that would be apt to consume the company’s product, but aren’t currently doing so) in “local” Spain, so our group analyzed how Spaniards thought and what they did, essentially examining the Spanish culture. Being a foreigner, I relied on the knowledge of my five Spanish group members for any information relating to Spain’s fizzy drink culture, but through my own observations I also learned that Spanish teens have a lot more independence than American teens, and this understanding came though my own immersion in their culture. It also helped in my overall assimilation process not only to know the language but the cultural details as well.

 

Through volunteering with Hispanic elementary students, I realized that while abroad I needed to continue trying to fully immerse myself in the culture I wanted to learn, leading me to work with a team of Spaniards in Spain. The nine year olds that I worked with at Pineview were completely bicultural due to their full immersion in a second culture and language. As a result of pushing myself to be fully immersed while in Spain, I then found that it was easier for me, too, to understand Spanish culture, and it provided me valuable opportunities to spend time discussing the values of different types of local Spanish citizens. Total immersion is key to understanding a culture!