What Anthropology Class Offered Me This Semester

Before this class, I thought that Anthropology class was about humanity's history and the changes that occurred in different cultures. To be honest, I did not even take a look into the dictionary to be sure that I knew the meaning of it. I just assumed I knew it.
After the first class, I got the fact that I was definitely wrong. I felt like this class was going to be challenging in many ways. It was kind of re-learning what I "knew".
The class opened my thirst of curiosity, and gave me a true definition of "cultural relativism" through my ethnography. Many topics discovered in class were before far far away to exist for me because I never paid attention to it. For example, I never thought that my words shape my vision of the world (The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis). Moreover, I could always directly or indirectly related discussions made in class with my own life. Professor Gaunt's enthusiasm to teach us definitely helped me in regard of my self-confidence. With all the experiences that she shared with us, I created inside me a want to do the same. At none time, I felt being left aside during class. Although, participation was hard for me at the beginning, I finally understood that if everybody did the same as me e.g. not sharing my experiences and knowledge, therefore how could I evolve? How could I improve? What was the point to come into class if I did not share my ideas with people around me? The discovery of TED definitely gave me ideas and an urgent need to stop living as individual but to look around me and to take benefit from all the existing differences.
While I am writing this essay, many other things come into my mind about how the class enabled me to take a step further into my life. But now it is time to act.
One thing that I will never forget that Professor Gaunt said: “We are as extraordinary as Bill Gates is"... It is truly a breath of fresh air straight to the brain.
I never had a class or a teacher as professor Gaunt, so inspiring.
I have now the ability to wear different glasses to see the world in a different way than before ( I wish I had the same luminous glasses though ;) )

Chapter 15 " The Road to Refugee Resettlement", Dianna Shandy

In this ethnography, the author gives us mainly who are the refugees, and, what their techniques of adaptation into new cultural environments are.
However, I could still indentify myself and my family path through what is to be an immigrant. My dad’s family moved from Italy to France when my dad was two. The opportunities that France offered at that time were much more interesting for my grandfather than the ones that Italy gave.
My grandfather wanted to live in France to give t his wife and his two sons the chance to be educated, to have a better life and to be able to build a future, even if he knew that he will have to work hard.
Coming from a very small village of Italy of 150 habitants who speak local dialect and where most of the work is done in farms and fields, my grandfather switched to become a worker in French manufactures. My dad’s family did not escape a danger as refugees would do, but they wanted to escape the common future of working as a farmer, that the village gave to them. Taking with him his family, he knew that these brutal changes would be a difficult task to accomplish, especially when none of them spoke French. Moreover, during this time while immigrant workers were needed into factories, they were still considered as not desirables.
Not only my dad, who was still young at that time, but also my grandmother and my grandfather had to learn a new language: French. They did not know anything about the place where they were about to live in nor what their future would be. When my grandfather started to work, he was not the only immigrant worker. Indeed, specific dormitories town were created to receive these immigrants and their families. Italians, Germans, Polishes and others were living together and trying to communicate as best as they can.
My grandmother, who never wanted to move to France, had difficulties to adapt herself and to create relationships with other immigrants. I must say that she is still struggling sometimes to speak French and even if it has been more than twenty years that they live in a new neighborhood, she did not create friendships with neighbors. Feeling to have been uprooting, my grandmother wishes she could go back in her village. Dianna Shandy said in the ethnography “trying to maintain their original ethnic group identity” (p159, conclusion); I think that is exactly what my grandmother was trying to do. When my grandfather made his choice, he knew that the adaptation to the cultural environment would be either adaptive or maladaptive but for him the try worth it.
Now fifty years after their immigrations, both my grandparents and my dad still have the Italian passport as they refused to give it up for the French one. My grandmother indentifies herself as being an Italian immigrant but never considered having something French within herself. My grandfather, who is retired since a long time, apparently does not regret his choice as nothing will make him go back to the village. My dad, who speaks both Italian and French, also thinks about himself as an Italian immigrant, but for whom the change of cultural environment was definitely benefic. My grandfather accomplished what he wanted: he offered to his family a better future and the opportunity to his sons to have an education.
Finally, I could also consider myself as an immigrant, as I moved from France to New-York in the hope to have a different life than the one in France. I do not yet if my choice was a good one but I truly think that a huge part of people nowadays could be considered as being immigrant.
However, immigration has been a taboo topic by being perceived as a fear to have against the immigrant. Unfortunately, governments do not see the benefits and the valuable resources that it creates within a country. Mainly, I could consider myself as a part-immigrant because for the moment nothing allows me to stay in New York City after graduating.

Shandy, Dianna.. "The Road to Refugee Resettlement." Conformity and Conflict. 4th edition. Pearson Education Inc. 2008. pp.151 - 160