Other people's views on the American Way of Life

Assignment #3:

A lot of people have different aspects of what the American Way of Life is. Many people that I have interviewed think that the American Way of Life is about freedom and success. A middle class white female teacher said that the American Way of Life is “freedom of speech” and the freedom of being “able to live how we wanted”. A middle class Asian male said that we come here to become “independent, get our own job, own things and to be able to live by ourselves”. This connects to what the teacher said about how the freedom works in the American Way of Life. The pattern that I see is that the people think of freedom as being able to work and living the way they wanted. In general the people are not being told of how to live but they find their own way to live how they want. They also have their own choice and rights to choose from to become independent and work hard. By saying that the American Way of Life has a lot of “freedom” (said by others) shows how we have more opportunities than other countries.
However another middle class white male said that we have “false” freedom and we do not come to America to “work, to get rich”. Sometimes when people want to get rich, or become successful, they would use “varies means” to get the success they want and become rich. Another pattern in the American way of Life is it seems that the more work they do, the richer they can get and achieving more success to get the freedom they want. Many of the people I had interviewed are mostly middle class people; this made me think that they are working hard to get money and success. Also I observed that the people who are in the middle or low class does not have as much freedom as the rich people so they have to do much more work to get what they want. So their perspectives on the American Way of Life are different than the other classes in the society.
With the aspect of being successful, age difference matters as well. Since some adults can find work, they can have money to live by themselves and support themselves. However, children and teenagers (ones that seem to have a hard time finding jobs) are the ones who need support from the adults (parents, relatives, foster parents or responsible adults). The children and the non working teenagers would have a lot of time on their hands so they would do much more activities or maybe none. One of my classmates named Maggie said in terms of her soul connecting to the American Way of Life, she does “not live in a meaningful life” because she has no job and is unproductive. However she compared how when people get a job, they would feel tired and desperately wants a break. This shows how when people have a job, they have a lot of free time but when people do have a job, they would get busy and would not get a lot of freedom so are unable to do what they want to do in their personal lives. So noticing about the age difference, the “success” of the American Way of Life for the children and non working teens are different than the “success” of the American Way of Life for the adults.