Being a global citizen

Being a Global CitizenAs an assignment before going into our freshman year, TCU required all incoming students to read and write a paper about a story to deepen our understanding of what it means to be a global citizen. Here, you will find the paper I wrote about what I have learned from this book that I thought would be a drag to read:
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Two Words.
Global Citizen. The Kosmos Journal defines it as “someone who identifies with being part of an emerging world community and whose actions contribute to building this community’s values and practices.” Firoozeh Dumas exemplifies herself as a global citizen through her life-growing up and developing an American lifestyle while still maintaining her Iranian culture and traditions intact. My little brothers define it as literally “a citizen who is global.” Thanks lil’ bros. To me, however, throughout reading this book and also being a Korean-American for 19 years, I describe a global citizen as simply learning. We live in such a diverse world-our people, culture, customs, the list could go on. Therefore, it can be difficult to figure out how we identify ourselves as citizens in this world. In the book, Firoozeh Dumas talks about how immigrants can’t really comprehend where they belong at a point in their lives when she writes “If and when we fall into this pond, will we be singularly American or will we hyphenate? Can we hold on to anything or does our past just end up at the bottom of the pond?…” (Dumas 68). I always wondered that, too. Having been born in America, I do not know about the Korean culture other than some of the traditions we celebrate or some of the food we eat. Other than that, I define myself as a country music-obsessed, Chick-fil a-eating, Grey’s Anatomy fan. That’s when I realized, however, that I have learned all of those things. My American friends invited me to their houses to binge watch Grey’s Anatomy or when I visited Fort Worth on a TCU college tour to discover the life-changing deliciousness of a Chick-fil a chicken burger. We are all learning here as we go through this thing called life and along the way, we discover different cultures and lifestyles. There will for sure be things that we hold onto such as Firoozeh’s Iranian way of showing thanks through gift giving. There will also be things we adopt from new cultures-for example, when Firoozeh’s family tries the American way of celebrating death rather than their cultural way of a competition of who grieves the hardest. Lastly, there will be things that we experience, but never accept-the American Thanksgiving culinary tradition of yams with melted marshmallows (I agree with Firoozeh-gross!) As we all citizens learn in this diverse world, we become what my brothers says, citizens whom are truly global.
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As we create an identity for ourselves through the many cultural learning lessons we experience, I believe that global citizens also share their heritage to others. Firoozeh Dumas writes, “America changes us, in ways we didn’t realize. Oddly enough, we also changed America” (Dumas 160). As we live a life of relationships and community, we not only learn but also naturally share how we have become who we are. As one can see, we are always learning, no matter what. That is what founds our identity as a global citizen. For one thing, Firoozeh taught me to never give a graduation speech with the word “journey” in it again as I look back and realize the countless times I spoke that word in my high school graduatiom speech. I learned to never judge a book by it’s cover the moment I closed the book of Laughing Without an Accent only to want to read it again. I also learned from Dumas that when it comes to being a global citizen, “it doesn’t matter where we learn that lesson [of hatred being a waste and never an option]. It’s just important that we do” (Dumas 223). To me, being a global citizen also means that we are learning in a world of hate to rise above and discover how when we open ourselves up to new people, new things, and new improvements, we can actually live up to those two words.