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- One of the massive parts of American Culture is working. In America, there seems to always be this constant need for people to be more successful, and earn more money each year. More than anywhere else, people choose work over other things in their life to potentially make it bigger or continue to grasp onto what they have. We have longer work weeks, more hours, and fewer vacations than the majority of other countries, and it seems a lot of people don’t even take the entire break they have. The work-life balance here is not much of a balance as people tend to choose work above all, and always feel the need to keep going as life passes by. This is in part to the rising cost of everything, but I feel like for generations it has been around that you need to work as much as possible and be doing the best, whether you like it to not to survive.
- My opinion of this is that this part of American Culture is not so good. I feel like since the moment I stepped foot into high school there was this pressure to know what I want to do with my life, and already start to get experience. I think the reason there are so many health, and mental health problems in our country is that people don’t take the time they need off, and stress about the future since their early school days. I think the constant hustle culture and always feeling like you need to move on to the next big thing is bad for our country as well. I am not saying that it’s bad to want more, and want to work for that, but in America, there seems to be this extra competition of who is always doing the most and has the biggest everything. To me, a lot of people work for the wrong reasons, like wanting these materialistic things, to make themselves seem more or above others. People need to get outside more and stop working overtime for what they signed up for. More people here need to care-less more and find passions outside of their work to always maintain a happy and healthy life.
- I think people outside of America would agree with what I said for the most part. From people, I’ve met from other countries, and things I have read, there seems to be much more emphasis on living, in other countries as opposed to working your life away. I think America is portrayed and viewed as a work-oriented country, and very big and grand.
- This prepares me for my time abroad as I am able to reflect on what it is like in America and be able to contrast that with another culture I am about to be submerged in. I think this will help me go into my time abroad with a fresh start, see what their work-life balance is like there, and be able to take things away from that as well.
