So far, this course has been very interesting and I have learned a lot of things. Our conversation in class about the culture iceberg was very interesting. I think that it’s true that there are many different aspects to culture that we often don’t think about. In particular, in Bennett’s article, the difference between Culture and culture was really interesting, as I often think of them as inseparable, even though they are both individual and focus on different aspects of a group of people.

In class, we talked about the difference between high power distance and low power distance. In high power distance societies, inequality is normal and there is vertical organization and centralization of power with lots of lower class people and children that learn respect. In low power distance societies, inequality is considered wrong, there’s democratic leadership, decentralization and children learn independence. Before, I had known of these differences in different places and societies, but I had not known the vocabulary for expressing these differences, so now I have a more formal understanding of these differences.

We also talked about our experiences with time in class and how it can vary depending on where you are and who you are interacting with. Monochronic time involves focusing on one thing at a time, is task oriented, values the rules of privacy, and is associated with low context societies, while polychronic time involves focusing on several things at a time, is people oriented, and values the rules of relationships. I think the differences in monochronic and polychronic time can lead to misunderstandings if someone is used to one and everyone around them follows the other and it’s not something I had thought about before this class and our discussion, but I am now better prepared to deal with differences in time.