Culture Clash over Economics

Now don't worry, I know the title of this post sounds ominous, but nothing bad occurred in this "culture clash." Not even a debate. This entry is merely going to be my reflection over an interesting exchange that happened between my History of Photography professor and one of my fellow Preshquitos. We were discussing themes for our final photo project, when my classmate presented her idea of doing her project about her fear of being poor. This idea didn't strike me as strange in the least. We all have our fears. Personally I fear death, flying, and Gollum from Lord of the Rings. What has prompted me to post now, a day after the incident, was our professor's response. He immediately responded with,
        "Well that's an irrational fear."
All of us (there were about 6/7 of us in this tutoring session) just sat there in awkward silence. I mean, my fear of Gollum could definitely be called irrational. He's a fictional character for heaven's sake. And my mother has called my fear of flying irrational, although I beg to differ on that point. However, never would I have described the fear of poverty as being irrational. Hard times can come on anyone. He eventually followed that up with, "You'll have a degree from a good university, there's no way you will end up on the streets." Now, I'm guessing he hasn't heard/disregards the common phrase describing liberal arts majors living in a box. However, ignoring all the people we currently know who can't find jobs after graduating, his point isn't completely out there. None of the jobless college graduates that I've heard of are living on the streets. What struck me most was the next thing he said. He said, "What's the unemployment rate in the US? 7%? 8%? Well here it is 30%." We all just sat there kind of stunned. I wonder if he thinks we're all spoiled Americans, complaining about unemployment in our country when Spain is struggling so much more. It was definitely a wake up call to me. Here in our country people are ragging on Obama and talking about how bad our economy is, and people are struggling, I know. But in Spain almost a third of the population is unemployed. More than 3 times the percentage of our country that is unemployed.


     I guess one benefit of spending this semester in Spain is learning the skill of keeping things in perspective. Sometimes I think a lot of us in the US become so focused on our own problems that we forget that other countries have it off worse. Or even that some country's are doing things better than we are. I am guilty of this myself. I didn't even know the basics of Spain's political system, whereas my host family knew all about our election, the situation in the House of Representatives, and many of the details of past elections. They don't know the intricacies of our system, but they still knew way more than I did. That's definitely something I should work to improve when I get back home. Got to try and be more aware.