Just as many of you in Carlos Tapia School have done, all my life I have grown up in the United States. When we have lived in a place for a while, we get used to the patterns of our daily lives. Although all of our lives have individual characteristics in the U.S., with different numbers of siblings, different types of homes and different stores we like to frequent, by living in the U.S. we all share an "American" lifestyle. Sometimes we are not always aware of the things that make our American life unique, like the type of money we use, the way classes arranged in schools, the manner in which we move from place to place with public transportation or the process of applying for a job.
These factors and many others mix with what we learn in school, from friends and at home to form what is called our "perspective". Our perspective is the specific way in which we see things in life. It allows us to recognize what makes sense to us and we use it to make decisions or even make judgments. When we first meet someone from another country, or even another neighborhood, some of their habits, words or actions may seem different or confusing to understand, but it is not because their way of life is wrong, it’s just that they have grown up with different ‘normals’ than us, and our perspective is different from theirs.
