When in Europe the UK and Beyond: What makes up your identity?

Have you ever taken a moment to yourself and asked what makes up who you are? If not you will gain a lot from this experience, and it will help you gain not only a better understanding of yourself, but also the differences between you and others.

Today in my Intercultural Communications Class, we did a very interesting exercise. We were instructed to take out our identification cards from our respective countries. We then had a class discussion about our ID cards and what was on them. We came to learn that certain countries and even different cities do their ID cards differently. Some ID’s list the name of your parents; others list the region in which you are from. Some do not list where you were born and some list your blood type.

So you are probably sitting there and wondering why this matters…. Different countries place different emphasis on identifying information. The question then becomes why is one piece of information more important to one culture as opposed to the other? This is something very interesting to explore and understanding it will help you communicate more effectively with people of other cultures.