Life as a Teenager

Here is our (Taten Evans, Kyle Gowers, Caleb Olsen, and Dakota Nielsen) video of what it is like to be a teenager. Enjoy.

Topic Essay 2 Taten Evans

Dating and marriage in my culture is heavily tied to my religion. You have to date and get married when my religion says I can. In my culture it is generally accepted and expected that we will not start to date until we are sixteen. I think that this helps people mature before they start to date and that can help with a more safe, fun, and interesting dates. Now I do not want to preach to anybody so I will focus more on the aspect of dating in my culture and put short ties to religion in it because of how heavily influenced dating and marriage are related to religion in my culture.
Dating is usually started at the age of sixteen in my culture. Dating is generally hanging out with friends but you inviting a certain person. We generally do not have one on one dates but usually group dates (tying back to religion generally). Most of our key dates are dances that are at our schools. We generally date boys and girls of our age group maybe someone a year older or younger than ourselves. We almost always drive to our dates (I would not usually put this in here until I found out that in New York they do not drive at all). Dates are usually kept generally short because of religion generally. Dating is always in a public setting limiting intimate interactions between one another also generally due to religion and self morals if you have any. When people date in our culture that does not mean that they are “going out” or “Boyfriend, Girlfriend”. Many of our dates are between friends with no intentions to make it anything other than friends. I am actually not really sure why this is, my thoughts on it is not completely because of religion but because in our culture dating is all for fun not just to be with the one you “love” or believe you love at your young adolescent age. It may also be due to boys going on mission when they get older and not wanting to get attached.
Marriage is also heavily tied to religion in my culture. Usually boys marry after their missions which would be around the age of twenty-one. In my culture it is very common for people to get married when they are at a young age. I really have not the slightest idea why that is but I could probably relate it to religion because it seems that everything else I have written about has tied into religion somehow.
In all religion plays an unexplainable part in our dating and marriage. Even if someone is not of the same religion it is so ingrained into us that most people follow the same guidelines because that is our social and cultural norm.

Anthropology Topical Essay 1

Anthropology Topical Essay 1
Taten Evans B3 4/26/11

Ethnocentrism is the belief that your race and/or culture is the right one that everyone should be. If you are ethnocentric then you tend to be rude to other races or cultures or just do not think that they might think differently than their own culture does.
Cultural Relativism is when a person or people think about how the other race or culture will react to the situation. Not all cultures think the same way so if you are culturally relative then you do think about what they might think. It is technically the opposite of ethnocentrism.
In Shakespeare in the Bush Laura found out that the Bushman culture did not quite understand and take Hamlet the way that most people in her culture do. She tried to tell them but they would not understand because they didn’t or couldn’t really think differently than what they had grown up knowing. When you are taught some and you grow up knowing it for your entire life and somebody tries to tell you differently it is hard to see their point of view because it has always been that way and you never thought that it would change. That was Laura’s problem in the story Shakespeare in the Bush. One of the problems that she faced was that the tribesmen believed it right for the dead king’s brother to marry his widow, where in Laura’s culture that is not something that people generally do. But the tribesman believed that it was the right thing for him to do because in their tribe the brother always married his brother’s widow (though you do have to know that also in their tribe it was ok to have multiple wives). Another problem that she faced was that the tribesmen do not believe in ghost, so the dead king who came to speak to Hamlet was not a ghost but an omen sent from a witch.
In Eating Christmas in the Kalahari Richard, an Anthropologist studying in the Kalahari Desert stumbled upon some problems. His problem was that he bought a big cow for the tribe and the tribes that were invited to eat for their big Christmas celebration. The cow that he bought was the biggest one that he had found after watching the cows come to the watering hole for many days. But after he bought it everyone in the tribe kept coming to him and telling him how poor of a decision he had made and that the cow is worthless to them. He did not understand how that could be because of how big the cow is. He even got the point where he was going to buy another cow to make up for the supposed lose that was inevitable from this cow. But when they cut open the cow it was very fatty which is exactly what they like it to be like! He was very confused by this and started to ask around. He found out that it is their custom to tell the person that it is not good to keep them humble. I guess you could say they ‘pride themselves in their humility’ per say. No matter what the event was whether it was an animal that was killed in a hunt or a fish caught they never told each other how big or good it was but rather how little or bad it was. Richard was very confused because that was not at all the way that it happened in his culture.
Anthropologists face many trials in their field of work. They sometimes have tribes or people who do not want to cooperate with them which can make your research very difficult. When you want to learn more about a culture of people you need them to cooperate with you for you to learn the very most that you can. Other problems that they might face is not seeing things the way that the people do, if you do not think the way they do then you will not fully understand them. You may even be ostracized from the group because you cannot fit in. Both Richard and Laura faced these problems but seemed to be able to work past them by the end of the stories. Anthropologist need to learn how to see things in other people’s eyes. Like in Eating Christmas in the Kalahari Richard did not think that people provide food for each other all the time so him providing the people with a cow was not that big of a deal at all, but he did not think of that and thought it to be a big deal in his opinion, which in his culture it probably would have been. Anthropologists have to deal with many challenges in their field of work.

We are Sixteen

Where I have been today.

We are Sixteen

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We are Sixteen

My Bedroom

You are what you Wear

What inspires me