I think that I would help out immigrants that were in poor situations for a few reasons. First, I believe that if I were in a position of economic stability, helping others is a responsibility no matter if they were immigrants or not. Money is a very powerful resource and when used the right way has the potential to change lives. Even a small contribution like buying a meal for someone when they could not put food on the table would remain in that person’s memory forever. I think another reason that I would help is that I know what it is like to be in a situation where money is scarce. My past has given me a very different perspective on the how all people are connected and I really believe that sharing with one another is the true meaning in life. We are all human beings and helping out when someone is less fortunate is a responsibility bestowed on society that we must not ignore.
Although all people are worth helping, immigrants in America have an especially high potential to further contribute positively to society. The very act of leaving a homeland requires great courage and risk-taking- two great qualities in entrepreneurs and innovators, the initial pioneers of the American dream. Leaving their homes to pursue brighter futures indicates quite a bit of ambition as well – they are clearly not willing to settle for whatever it is their country of origin has offered them, and are looking elsewhere to satisfy their zealous dreams. Surviving in a new land, learning the language, fitting in – all this requires adaptability and resourcefulness. Even if the immigrant goes on to do something that seems relatively simple – owning a gas station, working in a hotel – it is a positive contribution to society. Furthermore, they will appreciate the opportunities given to them and pass on their appreciation to their children, who are likely to go to college and further contribute to society.
Thus, it’s easy to come to the conclusion that helping immigrants is the choice I would make. Not only it is the benevolent and moral thing to do, it is a lasting investment for the betterment of society at large.

In this economy, it is important to rely on the people you know to find a job. Relying on the people you know in the workforce will only help you. Once you get the job, it’s up to you to keep up with the demands of the job. I don’t really think there is shame in using nepotism to get your foot into the door. My next-door neighbor is the superintendant of a nearby school district. She has known me since I was four years old and is very good friends with my mother. Since I am an elementary education major, she has been an excellent advisor for me over the years. She had an opening in her school district’s summer programs, and offered me a position. It was an unpaid internship, observing special education teachers and their interaction with special needs students who qualified for year-round schooling. I’m grateful for having the opportunity to being exposed to special education. I learned a lot in that internship, and in all honesty, I wouldn’t have been able to get that internship anywhere else. It was all because I knew the woman in charge.
My father gave my roommate an internship last summer in the marketing department. She did terrible there. She had no idea what she was doing, she was late to work all most every morning, and just did not prove herself at all. Her internship was terminated early, maybe only a month after starting. My dad helped her get the internship, but it was up to her to excel at it, and because she didn’t, she was fired. When people complain about nepotism being like favoritism, and this is true to some extent. It is up to the individual, then, to prove that he/she has the skills and knowledge to keep up with the task or job

I like to dress up for special occasions, but not for every Friday or Saturday night. In all honesty, I feel bad for those girls who walk around in tiny dresses, without stockings, and six-inch heals, in 14-degree weather. Why are they doing that to themselves? I think it’s ridiculous how they are putting their health at risk by walking across town with barely anything on, torturing their poor feet, and calling that a good time. All just to get the attention from a fraternity brother. Ridiculous! From personal experience, I really don’t think guys care. Sure, they like a little skin, but jeans make your butt look just as cute as a tiny dress would. In fact, pants in snow are smart, reasonable, and classy. And a drunk female is a drunk female, whether she’s in a skirt or in sweatpants. It actually bothers me how girls do this only for the attention of guys. We try to justify it in ways like convincing ourselves that we dress up for other girls because girls can be very judgmental about look. We justify it by saying we like to wear short dresses with six-inch heals in the freezing cold weather. We try to convince ourselves that it’s not for boys, it’s for us and other girls. Maybe fraternity brothers can be judgmental too – a hott girl is a girl who isn’t afraid of showing some skin.
This lecture didn’t really change my mind on girls dressing up and guys dressing down. I’m a fan of everyone dressing comfortably. I don’t think it’s a gender-inequality issue when girls dress up and guys dress down. I think there are enough girls in school who are against it all and don’t follow that “norm”.

I’ve dated both Indian and white guys. Both are very different experiences, and unfortunately, a lot of it had to do because of the cultural differences. My parents were always very strict with me and I was never allowed to date anyone in high school. That doesn’t mean I didn’t, I just had to go behind their backs and lie about it. My first boyfriend my sophomore year in high school was Indian. He never told his parents about me, and I never told my parents about him. When we would hang out, I would have to lie to my parents to convince them I was actually going out with some girlfriends. He understood why I had to hide him from my parents, as I understood why he had to hide me from his. I dated a white guy for a year in high school as well, and that was very different. I would go to his house all the time, and have dinner with his family on many occasions. Unfortunately, I still had to lie to my parents, and I never told them about him. My boyfriend at the time never seemed to understand why he couldn’t come over to my house to watch a movie or have dinner. It was also kind of difficult to explain seeing as how different our families were. Now that I’m in college, I’m free to do what I want, date whomever I want, and my parents are all right with that; but of course they have their limitations. I dated an Indian guy my freshman year, and it took me about 2 months to ponder up the courage to actually tell them about him. When they actually met him, my mom really liked him, and my dad was just not thrilled about me being with a guy at all (like most dads). Of course that freshman year relationship didn’t last long. This past year, I briefly dated a white guy. He was a senior, heading to law school, great guy. I told my mom about him, and she had questions (she never questioned my Indian boyfriend). She wanted to know where he grew up, what his parents were like, how well he did in school. To her, because I wasn’t dating within her liking, he had other things to prove to her.
I personally don’t care what race I date, but because my family cares, I should care too. Looking at it in the long run, there is a reason why marriages between the same race work, not to say that mixed-race marriages don’t work. It all comes down to beliefs and values, and if you can deal with each other’s differences, then go for it.

The video of the dolls was quite disturbing to me. I am a lighter skinned Asian Indian, and in my culture (like African American culture), the fairer your skin is, the more beautiful you are considered. I do not agree with this cultural belief because I know plenty of dark-skinned black and brown women who are drop-dead gorgeous. Skin is just a color, and it is a shame that we are taught from the very beginning that we must look a certain way in order to be beautiful. Growing up, I played with Barbie dolls often. I don’t believe there were black Barbie dolls back then. And if there were, no one ever bought me one, because I had never seen a black Barbie doll until much later on in childhood (after I was past the doll-playing stage). I never noticed that my hair color was darker than Barbie’s long blonde hair. I never noticed that Barbie had fairer skin than my golden skin. I think the only thing I ever noticed was that Barbie had boobs, and I didn’t.
Because I had never really seen a black Barbie doll, I can’t really say I would have preferred a white doll to a black doll. But the problem also is, why hadn’t anyone bought me a black Barbie doll?
When I was about 8 years old, Barbie dolls were being made to represent different cultures. So of course my grandmother bought me the Indian Barbie doll, in her beautiful red sari. Though I was out of the doll stage of my life, I saw the Indian Barbie doll as a prized possession. I guess it was because she was like me.
Ever since I was young, my grandmothers would limit the time I spent outside in the sun. They would say I couldn’t play outside for too long because I would get dark. I didn’t care if I was dark or not, but they did. I never really understood what the big deal was, but I went along with it anyway. My family never taught me that being dark-skinned meant you were ugly; they just tried their best to protect me (and my fair skin) from getting dark. I never realized how serious the skin color issue was until I went to India last year. Having fair skin showed that you were of upper class in society. Only servants and labor workers who spent most of their time in the brutal sun there had dark skin. There were ads all over billboards and the television for fairer-skin creams. To be honest, I thought it was ridiculous, and thought the whole cultural attitude to be superficial. My aunts there told me that if a young girl had dark skin, it would be very difficult for her to get a marriage proposal from a respectable family. That just shows that marriages are arranged on the basis of how “attractive” a female is; it has nothing to do with the girl’s personality, her education, her family background, etc.

I think population control is a very difficult thing to accomplish in a large country. Sure, China has had their one-child per family policy running for years now, but in my opinion, they started that policy a little too late. Their population was much too high. There were too many people living in dense areas, and not enough land or resources for people to live decent lifestyles. China was in trouble, and as a last resort, they enforced that policy. I don’t think the United States is having an overpopulation issue, but we are using up too many of the world’s resources. We are practically stealing resources from third-world countries just so Americans can live their lavish lifestyles. I can’t remember if this was states in lecture or not, but Americans use up close to 2/3 of the world’s resources with barely any of the world’s population. It just goes to show the uneven distribution of resources and wealth in the world. New sciences and technology have helped somewhat with the population control in other countries through the use of contraception and sterilization; however, science can only prevent so much. In many cultures around the world, it is widely accepted that a woman’s primary goal in life is to bear more children into the world. Generations ago, it was not a big deal; now, there are simply too many people on this planet!
So how can we save our resources? Take small, baby steps in your every day lifestyle. Recycling, though seems petty and inconvenient, really does make a difference. Buying local goods from local farmers will eventually stop the use of pesticides overseas because we won’t rely on goods from abroad. Take note where your food is actually coming from, who is growing it, where it was grown, etc. If we all try to live sustainably in some way or another, it will make a huge difference and resources will be savored in the long run.

I think people in America are very spoiled. We take everything for granted. We go through three to four bottles of water on a daily basis, not thinking about where our trash is going. We grocery shop like there is no tomorrow. We throw food away left and right, without even considering the rough facts that billions of people are starving. We use and dispose of technology at rapid rates. We’re just spoiled.
I can honestly admit, unfortunately, that I am very spoiled as well. I spend money without anything global crossing my mind and I use resources mindlessly. I feel as though Americans live differently than most people around the world. We are selfish in our lifestyles, and I think it is important for us to step back and take a look at how other people live.
I had the trip of a lifetime last winter. I went to India for the very first time just to see where my grandparents grew up and to witness my heritage and culture. India is overpopulated, but when you are there, it honestly seems as though overpopulation is an understatement. There are just SO many people there. It makes you think to yourself, how do all these people live? They live in poverty; that’s how they live. I saw so many malnourished children and adults, that it was disheartening and eye opening at the same time. I have never seen so many people in one place live like that. There were beggars everywhere we went, and it was hard because we couldn’t give to everyone. My extended family members in India were luckily well off. All of my aunts and uncles there are working professionals, and my cousins were in college, or definitely headed to college. Even so, being a part of the middle to upper middle classes of New Delhi or Bombay is a totally different experience from being a part of the middle to upper middle classes in any American city or suburb. They are very careful to buy food items in proportion, rarely ever throwing food away. Leftovers were always, without question, taken outside of the gated neighborhood and given to a poor person seen on the street. In that sense, I feel as though they are more giving there. But at the same time, every household I went to had servants working full time. There was always a cook at hand, a dishwasher at hand, a specific person to come in and do laundry every morning, a specific person to come in and sweep the floors every morning, and there was always a full-time driver. Houses had, what they called, servant headquarters, usually just a small corner in the house that wasn’t seen by visitors, where the servants would sleep at night. In America, we don’t have servants. We may have maids or cleaning ladies working in the house, but we treat them with respect (unlike how servants were treated in India) and it is actually seen as a luxury to have a cleaning lady or maid. In India, it is normal to assume that if you have some money, you have at least one servant working for you.

I definitely describe myself differently in other countries. If someone asks me what I am in America, I say I am Indian. When I am abroad, I say I am American. I never really thought about why I say what I say. I guess it’s because in America, there is so much diversity. I honestly feel kind of stupid saying, “I’m American” in America. Isn’t everyone American if they sound American/have American accents? So to differentiate ourselves among the Americans, we say our ethnicity; therefore, I say I am Indian, even though I was born and raised in America, and am, according to my passport, American. It sounds just as dumb as saying, “I speak American”, when really I speak English (sure, it’s American English). At school, we all speak with the same accent, we all dress alike, and we have similar attitudes toward worldly topics. My skin color, my hair color, my physical and facial features, and my nationality are what distinguish me from the rest of my peers.
When I went to India for the first time a year ago, it was an interesting experience. My sister and my parents and I really stood out among our “own people.” It was a very strange thing; we dressed differently, mine and my sister’s hair and makeup was very different from our cousins and other girls our age, even my mother’s native tongue, Hindi, was different from the natives there. It honestly made me proud to say I was American among all the Indians I met in India. I can’t say I’m Indian in India! My family and I were seen and treated as foreigners there even though we physically look Indian with tan skin and brown to black hair. Hanging out with some cousins that were my age there was different. There wasn’t a language barrier because they all spoke fluent English, but they made fun of my accent (but of course in my head, they were the ones with the funny accents).
When I went to London, it was really a different experience. There, brown people (Indians and Pakistanis in particular) are treated as lower-class citizens because they occupy most of the labor work jobs. When my dad and I were there, for the first time in my life I saw and felt prejudice against brown people. The busboys at restaurants were all Indian (though they had perfect British accents). Waitresses were kind of rude to my dad and I because when they saw us, we were brown, but when they heard us, we were clearly American. I wasn’t proud to say I was American, nor was I proud to say I was Indian while I was there.

Classifications have been the root of all social problems for as long as time. Social class, income, job status, race, color, ethnicity, gender, age, and the list goes on. Because society decided that classifying people is important in determining who gets the upper hand and the lower ends of the stick, individuals now believe in it too. A poor person has the mindset of “I’m poor, my children will not receive a decent education, and they will be poor too”. That’s not the greatest mindset to live by, but society has engraved in all of us that that’s how it’s done.
I am a 19-year-old female. I identify with a lot of “classic” feminine notions; I love to shop, I am obsessed with staying thin, and I love to dress up nicely and go places. However, I don’t know how to cook, and I really don’t know how to do housework.
I come from the upper-middle class. My parents are both professionals in the working world, and they work very hard to provide this lifestyle for our family. I guess you could say I lived a very privileged lifestyle growing up. We have a beautiful house in the suburbs of Philadelphia, there were always nannies and cleaning ladies taking care of things while my parents were both out working. There were extravagant birthday parties each year, and even more extravagant vacations taken with the extended family. I was lucky growing up, but in college, I decided to break away from all that and be (mostly) independent financially.
My family is a pretty normal, nuclear family. Mom, Dad, me, and my younger sister. I am of Indian descent, so my parents actually had an arranged marriage. Divorcing a spouse is out of the question in my culture (unless it’s absolutely necessary). We speak mostly English in the household, but sometimes, when my mother gets mad, she starts to speak Hindi. I understand most of it, but I always find it puzzling why she busts out in her native tongue only when her emotions are high.
I was born in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, but moved to Philadelphia when I was six months old. And then into the suburbs of Philadelphia when I was 4, and I’ve lived there since.
I have Celiac’s disease, which is a gluten intolerance. When I was young, I was severely underweight. The doctors put me on a special diet to gain weight, and it simply did not work. Finally, I was tested, and it came out to be that my body couldn’t digest wheat products and that was preventing other nutrients from being absorbed. I was 13 when I was diagnosed, and it was a huge change of diet; no cookies, no cake, no pizza or pasta. But now, 6 years later, it’s just normal for me to follow a gluten free diet.

I identify myself as Asian Indian (meaning my family is from India). Both my parents were born in India, and came to America in the 1960’s when they were very young children. I have noticed certain physical features among my family members and among others of Indian-descent.

Physical Features:
-Hair: Women typically have long, thick black hair; curly or straight; in India, if a woman has very long, thick, black, straight hair, she is considered to be beautiful
-Eye color: dark brown to black. I have also noticed that Indians have very large eyes; larger than Caucasians and African Americans. Many Indian women wear kajal on their eyes, which is basically just eyeliner, to enhance their eyes because culturally, a woman with large eyes is considered to be wise.
-Skin tone: depends on where your family is originally from; if you are from the Northern states, such as Punjab (where my family is from), you are more likely to have a lighter brown skin (which sometimes also includes dark brown hair and light brown eyes, as opposed to black hair and dark brown eyes); if your family is from the Southern states of India, such as Tamil Nadu, you are more likely to have very dark brown skin. In the North, it is much cooler than in the South of India; the climate of India almost directly relates to what shade of brown you are. When I was in India about year ago, members of the upper class were fair skinned, and the labor workers and servants working in the houses were darker. There, the fairer you are, the more likely you come from a wealthy family, and the more beautiful you are considered. It is not unlikely that a beautiful women will be called ugly simply because she is a darker shade of brown.
Height/Weight: generally speaking, Indian women are short and usually petit. I would say men are average height and average weight (according to American standards).
Standard of Living: I read somewhere that Indians are among the wealthiest living in America. I’m not sure if this is true or not, but Indians do have high expectations of their kids in terms of succeeding in school and at work. If given the opportunity, Indians will strive in their education to become a professional in the working world, and make money to live a comfortable lifestyle.
Stereotyping: I wouldn’t say that there is severe stereotyping of Indians in America. Yes, many Indians do own gas stations, and yes, New Jersey resides over 100,000 Indians within its densely populated state, but I wouldn’t say any of these are offensive in any way, because, well, they’re true.