I have a culture?

The first unit of this class required that everyone analyze their own personal culture before we took a deep dive into other, unfamiliar cultures. At first, I found this task challenging. I really had not considered the culture of my own life. Because I am used to the way I do things and the way my family does things, I was stuck on the assumption that my life was pretty "vanilla." However, in class we did a brainstorming activity in which we broke culture into categories of money, religion, family, etc. At the same time, Dr. Shaffer read us children's books that illustrated these types of cultures. Suddenly the ideas were flowing. My large sheet of paper was consumed by my culture. Interestingly enough, once I started thinking about what made my culture unique I couldn't stop. I had a scrap piece of paper that I was carrying around with me because I wanted to remember the ideas as they came up, and that was always happening at random times like when I was at dinner with my parents or grabbing drinks with friends. I started to notice the way I spoke differently with different people and the little intricacies that snuck in the way I think and act. It was also interesting to compare my culture with the cultures of my parents who (obviously) are older than I am and with my husband whose family is from Montana. All in all, I think I came up with a solid idea of what my personal culture is, and this helped me to be more considerate as I was learning about other people's cultures.