Today is my last day at the art museum. Ironically I chose to work 7 hours today :) The summer going into my freshman year, my high school art teacher asked if I wanted a job right away in the fall. Of course I said yes and interviewed with the museum. This is the only on campus job I know that lets the employee work on homework the entire time. Throughout my year years in college, I've worked there for eight semesters. Its were I've sat for hours at the front desk doing lesson plans and reading. This post isn't about all of that though.
My boss commonly hired international students since my freshman year. It's been mostly Chinese and Saudi Arabian students. This year there was a new addition with a graduate student from South Africa. Never before I come across such cultures. I can't even tell you how many hours I've spent talking to the students about their cultures. At one point, my Saudi Arabian friend Ali and exchanged questions about each other's cultures for about three hours one day. I've learned about how women are treated in the Middle East and what an arranged marriage is like. One of the guys even married their third cousin. Talk about weird right? But when you sit down and hear about what it's like to be in an arranged marriage, I have to admit that it does have its perks. Actually, it is logical and practical. Sometimes I think that Americans could learn alot from this different culture. I've learned about the Chinese government and met a student who was the second child in her family. This brought up the topic of the Chinese one child policy and the fear associated with it. This job not only gave me a place to do homework. More importantly it gave me a chance to become more culturally aware-which alot of education classes attempt to teach.
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