Culture Shock: My Experience

My journal is about culture shock. Culture shock is the disoriented feeling which occurs in the context of being in a new culture or when someone is suddenly subjected to an unfamiliar culture, way of life, or set of attitudes. For myself, culture shock came when I moved off to college and away from the life I was used to. I was born and raised in Arlington, Texas, which means that I have spent the last eighteen years in the same city and doing basically all the same things. I went to the elementary school down the street from my house for six years, and I had the same group of friends for those six years that I carried with me into junior high. My junior high was a five-minute walk from my house and I was there for two years. I spent the next four years at the high

Those four years I was in high school, I had a somewhat solidified routine. Monday through Friday I would wake up at six in the morning, would get dressed and ready for school, and then I would spend the next seven hours at school. While at school, I attended the same four classes every other day. Those classes started and ended at the same time every day. Lunch was always 12:37 pm and lasted the same duration of time. School started at 7:35 am and ended at 2:45 pm every day. While the classes themselves changed through the years, high school was basically a repetition of whatever I had done the day before and the week before and the month before. It was easy to fall into a routine with the familiarity of high school. While in Arlington, I also built a routine around working. For two years, I had the same job at Kroger. While I got promotions and my actual job description and duties would change, working at