My Culture of One Experience

I really enjoyed doing the Culture of One activity. It was a great chance to get to know other people. Not only get to know the stuff on the surface, but get to know things about them that would not come up in a standard conversation, and you would never have guessed about that person. In my group, I got to know some very deep and touchy things that I am sure were not something that was easy to share, and I really appreciate them for sharing that with me. Although the information itself helped me learn a lot about them, I also think that having the listeners not interrupt the speaker in any way, not even by saying "uh-huh" to agree with the person, really helped me learn even more about the speaker. It was really weird at first because I really wanted to give feedback to the speaker to show that I was listening and that I understood, but had to restrain myself. I even wondered when it was my turn to speak, if they were actually listening to me. Restraining myself from saying something to the speaker helped me listen to them better because instead of trying to come up with things to say to them, all my attention was to what they were saying, which allowed me to grasp more than I would have if I made comments while they spoke. I think that that is one of the problems in communication in America. We always have the tendency to interrupt someone's conversation, not only so that they know we are listening to them, but also so that we could say that we relate to what they are saying. I have noticed that in a conversation, people always try to put their input on things and bring the topic of the conversation to themselves. People say things like, "I know what you mean," "yeah, me too," or "something like that happened to me too." It is always "me" or "I." This kind of shows that we are more interested in talking about ourselves, than actually listening to the person and trying to help them out. I know that that is just what we do in America and is the norm, but sometimes, we just literally have to shut up and listen. We should just put ourselves aside and actually listen to what the person has to say in order to fully understand and help them because that is why they came to you in the first place. I hope to always think of this experience whenever I have a conversation and try to remain silent until they are done speaking to improve my listening skills.