Summary: A Life Changing Experience

Sometimes it is difficult to understand someone until you really experience their life. I discovered this first hand just last year in a life changing decision that left me enlightened, grateful, shameful, but most importantly a better person. This move was going to a basketball preparatory school and being one of the only Caucasians in the whole program and the school we attended. I learned so much on microstructural, mesostructural and macrostructural levels and what began to seem normal to me changed so much due to a new type of culture. Everything was different, from the way I was with my new friends to my relationship with teachers at school and even the way people looked at me as we travelled to different places for different tournaments.

During all my trips across the boarder, I never had any issues and expected no different, however, when going across with my teammates and coaches we were searched due to suspicion even though we had nothing to hide, we were just another travelling basketball team. After this event, I was a little worried, but knew it was best to stay calm in front of the boarder guards while they searched and attempted to do so while my pulse was still high, like a reaction with a grizzly bear (Brym and Lie 2018). They eventually let us go, realizing that there was nothing to worry about with us and the trip went on. As the trip went on, more and more racism was observed and I realized that my cultural relativism, my belief that all culture have equal value (Brym and Lie 2018), was not shared by many of the people we faced on this voyage. I never faced these situations in my life being a white male from a white family and I really relied on my emotional management to get me through these

Not only was emotional management seen, but sociological imagination was seen too as my challenges were all at different levels of social structures, microstructures with teammates, mesostructures at school and macrostructures with racism in another country. These experiences taught me a lot and looking back at it, its incredible to see how much these sociological principles apply to my