Faith Week 1: Identity Crisis!

Week 1- How Influential Language Is By Faith Tong Speaking English is normalized in America, since it’s one of the standard principles to learn. I always just accepted it as a fact even though I did not always like speaking English when I was little. Through the article called “Do You Speak American?” I realized the effects language has on not only me but probably everyone else in America. Language is much more important and influential than I thought it would be. Someone’s level and ability to speak English can affect how they’re treated by peers, teachers, bosses, coworkers, etc.  Do You Speak American? Something that stood out to me was when the author stated, “Language can separate insiders from outsiders.” I thought to myself, who are the insiders and outsiders? Are the insiders the Americans who have always been here, and immigrants such as my family and I are outsiders? If so, it now makes sense to my 5-year-old self. I always felt like I didn’t quite belong here, in Fremont...

Faith Tong Week 4: Identity in Materialistic Things     A thought came to my head one day, about how much I care about what I have. Do I have the latest iPhone? Are my clothes in trend? What do I not have that others' have? All these ideas are somehow built into my mindset, telling me that I need all of these "things" to be normal or even accepted. I was really curious if this was an psychological kind of need so I found an article about "The Psychology Of Stuff And Things".  psychology of stuff and things :0 In this article, the author tells us that "materialism peaked at middle adolescence (I'm assuming teenagers) just when self esteem tended to be lowest". This caught my attention, which was ironic since I am a teenager myself and hear about the issue of low self esteem a lot on social media. I never looked at self esteem as something that could be linked to materialism, so this was really eye-opening. I always assumed people liked buying stuff ...