Sociology Autobiography

Sociology Autobiography

Until I migrated to the United States with my sister last year, I had spent my years from birth to age seventeen in Yangon – a former capital of Myanmar, where a variety of human cultures exists. Yangon is a religious city where the Buddhism is widely professed. Although the majority of the population is Buddhist, freedom of religious belief is practiced. Buddhist values and norms shape the life of the community and people are highly religious, however, it is not defined as an official religion in Myanmar. Growing up in a family which strictly follows the customs and norms of the culture, I was influenced by the traditional practices of Myanmar culture since I was young. This autobiography, then, will show how I become who I am today and how the culture in which I was raised shaped my life.
To learn and understand more about my own culture, I interviewed my parents about the background, norms and values of the culture that we were raised in and the material goods which get along with that culture. My father grew up in the Shan states, the northern part of Myanmar, where he spent his preschool and middle school years. The family had been itinerating throughout the country since his father was the commander of the Burmese military in the 1960s, until then settled in Yangon where my father spent his years as a high school and college student. My father’s family put a high value in education as his father believed that education is the key to succeeding in anything you wish to attain and that every family member should be at least fairly educated. In order to be dutiful children, my father and his three older siblings strove for excellent grades and status in their academics. My father was raised in neither a prosperous family nor an impoverished one but all members had achieved their goals by the help of education. My father spent his four academic years in Yangon University, one of the best universities in Southeast Asia at that time, and...