Lisa Chen Writ 340

  American Like Me , edited by America Ferrera After reading  American Like Me, I felt like I gained a lot of insight and appreciation for the immigrant story and the variety of different cultures in the world. One story that stood out to me was Issa Rae's story of how she spent time in Senegal growing up. For the holiday Tabaski, people would get dressed up, do their hair, and for weeks fatten up goats or sheep that they would eat for this day. I haven't been exposed to this tradition before and it always interests me to learn how different cultures celebrate their most important holidays in comparison to American holidays. For example, Issa mentioned how her family would raise the goat, kill it themselves, and then cook it. This is definitely a big difference than the US since we just buy turkeys from the store on Thanksgiving and rarely, do we raise our own animals. This book made me realize how different cultures are very similar as well. Roxane Gay mentioned how her paren...

False Advertising Why electric cars are not the green solution they seem to be Extravagant, elegant, exotic – all words to describe flamingos, one of the biggest birds on the planet. Now, imagine a world where human actions cause the deaths of this majestic animal. Would you do everything you could to prevent it? Some people would not. “Every electric car, Tesla or otherwise, matters to the environment… Every time someone chooses electric, the future gets a little bit brighter!” Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted, implying that electric vehicles are a saving grace for our environmental problems. Little do his followers know that electric cars actually negatively affect the environment, especially flamingo habitats. From Production to the Grid to the Roads Electric vehicles work like the laptops we use everyday. We charge them and the electricity from the charge powers a battery that runs all the other parts. Many people praise electric vehicles because their batteries produce zero carbon emis...

 American Like Me , edited by America Ferrera For my book, I picked American Like Me  because I am a first-generation American too. My parents immigrated here from China, but I was born in the United States and grew up here my whole life. I feel like there are a lot of shared 'child of immigrant' experiences, such as having high expectations for yourself, adapting to cultural differences, and wanting to repay your parents back for their sacrifices. But I wanted stories that showed more unique first-generation experiences - I grew up in Indiana, which was not the most diverse place, but actually enjoyed my childhood there so I wanted to see how other people felt about their experiences growing up. I wanted to learn more about how other first-generation Americans balance their different cultures too. My first impression of the book is that there are even more similarities in the immigrant experience than I expected. I thought the way American Ferrera wrote the introduction was r...

Investment Bankers   When most people think of banking, they think of bank tellers at their local credit union who give or take dollar bills. Unfortunately, investment bankers don’t do either of those jobs and sadly, they don’t get the lollipops that somehow every local bank has. Even though investment banking isn’t as easy to explain as bank telling, I finally feel qualified to talk about the job after working long hours in it over the summer. This summer, I was an investment banking intern at Wells Fargo, which is one of the major banks in the United States.  An investment banker is someone who helps businesses buy other companies, sell themselves, or raise money. They give advice on how these businesses should reach their financial goals. This might sound completely different than what you think banking is, but that’s because the public never sees investment bankers - they only connect with the people who run these large companies. Their main goals are to help lar...