Cultural Immersion In Nursing Home

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Cultural Immersion In order to get that feeling of being a minority, I decided to go visit a nursing home. It was an eye-opening experience because it made me see how different I was from them. There was definitely a difference between how I act around them and how they acted around myself. In the beginning, when I walked through the door I was nervous because I wasn't sure of how they were going to perceive me. I felt like I was the one being judged. After a half hour or so they started to warm up to me. We were laughing and talking about stories they had from when they were my age, and said how nice it must be to be young. I kind of liked being the minority in this setting because it gave me an inside look on how things will be when I…show more content…
But once they know that they mean no harm, everyone relaxes and isn't on edge anymore. When visiting the nursing home, I realized that my norms and values are different than theirs. Their norms are the nurses, not having that independence, and having someone clean up after them, unlike mine where I clean up after myself and am pretty independent. One of the sociological theories that I put together after my experience was the Ideal vs. Real culture. My ideal thoughts about a nursing home were that it would be quiet, and kind of depressing. But when I got the real perspective, it was light and a pretty fun atmosphere. I did receive some insight on the nature vs. nurture debate and came to the conclusion that the nature part of it is that the patients know that they are losing their independence. But the nurture part is that the nurses try to give them back their independence by assisting them and making them feel worthwhile. After my experience, I learned that even though they may be old, they are still young at heart. Even though their outside appearance is old, they still have the same hearts that they did when they were my age. Multiculturalism is extremely important in society because it makes us see that even though we may all be different on the outside, we can still find

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