Your epic learning journey · Stop 6 of 10 · Explore Culture
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Field Journal · Personal Culture Quest
Who taught you
how to see the world?
Before we can understand culture in our classrooms and communities, we have to understand it in ourselves. This quest is personal. It asks you to look inward before looking outward.
A note before you begin
Culture is not something that happens to us. It is something we carry. This quest has four missions. Move through them in your own time, and bring your curiosity, your honesty, and something you care about.
1
Mission 1
Watch
Heart
Every family has rituals. Stories told at the table. Habits that no one questioned because they were simply how things were done. Lu shares one of hers, a holiday tradition rooted in the Great Depression, and what it taught her about the invisible threads that shape who we are.
Watch the video. Then sit with the question it leaves behind.
Pause here
What is one ritual from your own upbringing that you never questioned until now?
2
Mission 2
Read
Heart
I did not grow up thinking about culture. I grew up inside of it, the way we all do, without really noticing it was there.
It was not until I sat in an intercultural communications course as an organizational communication major that someone finally asked me to look at myself. Not at other cultures. At mine. At the values I had absorbed without ever being handed a list. At the beliefs I had carried into every conversation, every classroom, every relationship, without realizing they were shaping everything I saw.
That course was uncomfortable in the best possible way. It sparked fiery conversations about who was right and who was perceived as wrong. It put us in the kind of vulnerable space where growth actually happens. It introduced me to Edward T. Hall and his book Beyond Culture, whose cultural iceberg changed the way I understood myself and everyone around me.
Hall's insight was simple and profound. What we can see of any culture, the food, the music, the clothing, the celebrations, is only the surface. Below it lives everything that truly drives how we operate: our norms, our sense of personal space, our communication styles, our relationship to authority, our understanding of time and what we consider respectful. These are things we absorbed long before we had words for them, and they feel so natural that most of us never think to question them.
What stayed with me most was this: until I could honestly examine my own iceberg, I would always struggle to understand someone else's. We cannot see beyond our own lens until we know we are wearing one.
Above the surface
Food
Language
Music
Dress
Celebrations
Traditions
waterline
Below the surface
Values
Norms
Beliefs
Gender roles
Personal space
Communication styles
Decision making
Concepts of time
Pause here
Which part of your iceberg do you rarely talk about? What sits below the surface that shapes how you show up every day?
3
Mission 3
Observe
Head
Find an object from your heritage. It does not have to be precious or old. It just has to mean something. A photograph. A piece of fabric. A recipe card. A tool. Something that carries a story.
Hold it. Look at it slowly. Then open your journal and write. Do not edit yourself. Do not think about what sounds right. Just write what comes.
Journal prompts
What does this object tell you about where you come from and what you were taught to value?
Let these questions guide you as you write:
Where did this object come from, and who does it connect you to?
What values or beliefs does it carry?
What did it teach you about how the world works, even if no one said so directly?
What part of your iceberg does it reveal?
What values or beliefs does it carry?
What did it teach you about how the world works, even if no one said so directly?
What part of your iceberg does it reveal?
4
Mission 4
Share
Hands
Read back through what you wrote. Let it settle. Then ask yourself: what is the one idea that feels most important to carry forward?
Photograph your object and post it to our shared board below. Add that one idea as your caption. Just one sentence. The kind only you could write.
Closing Field Note
Culture is not something you discover. It is something you have been living all along, in rituals repeated without explanation, in values absorbed before you had words for them, in objects that carry stories older than you are.
What you did here was look at it honestly. You have started to see yours, and that changes what is possible.
The personal culture quest is the first lens. The next asks you to look outward, at the organizations around you, and ask what they are actually made of beneath the surface.
What the heart already knows is only the beginning.
What is next
Three quests. One framework.
Personal culture is the foundation. The journey continues.
think. chat. create.
thinkchat consultancy · lugerlach.com