Ulf's Comm 105 Introduction

Hello everyone and welcome to my COMM 105 blog. I look forward to working with all of you toward great success in our course. I am senior at SJSU on the brink of completing my undergrad degree in Cultural Anthropology. I am not a native Californian and have lived in Boston, Miami, Mexico City, Chiapas and all over the NorCal area. My cultural background consists of Cuban and Irish which often times caused much conflict in communication and ideals when I lived on the East Coast of the United States. In Boston I found that I wasn't Irish enough. I remember as a child watching someone in my school giving me a quick scan and commenting to another, "He's white...but some thing's just not right." When I left Boston and moved to Miami I found much to be the same despite the cross continental move. While in Boston I wasn't white/Irish enough, in Miami I wasn't Cuban enough and the fact that at the time I did not yet speak Spanish branded me as a hated "Gringo". Clearly racism still lives on in South Boston and South Florida. It wasn't until I moved to Mexico, a country and culture outside of my own, that I finally found acceptance for who I am, what I believed, what I thought and what made up my cultural background.

This experience is what brought me into the field of Cultural Anthropology and allowed me to specialize in understanding the effects of Globalization on an intercontinental level and also how differences in ideology (especially between developing/developed cultures and those that wish to maintain a more traditional way of life) create cross-cultural conflict. I joined this COMM 105 course because I believe the subject matter to be discussed goes hand in hand with my chosen course of study and specialization.

My communications background consists of: 3 years debate captain at St. Brendan High School (Miami, FL), winner of Florida International University's 2003 Anthropological Film Festival, public relations representative for the law offices of Sabrina Chasagne P.A. (Miami, FL), SJSU representative at the 2005 SWAA (South Western Anthropological Association) conference in San Jose, communications liaison between 33 Northern California Public School Districts and Extreme Learning Inc.