<TCK essay Final copy> - Seo Yeon Roh(Grace)

Where are you living? Is there your hometown? If there is not your hometown,

then where did you live? Is there your hometown? Which culture do you belong?

Are you belonging to your hometown culture? Or are you belonging to the

culture that you are living right now? Did you make your own culture? Are you

one of Third Culture Kids? If you aren’t sure about these questions and if you are

not sure about what TCK is, then I’ll tell you and let you know more about them.

Before talking about third culture and third culture kids, do you know what

‘culture’ is? Culture includes ‘customs and believes, art, way of life, social

organization of particular county or group’. The exact definition of culture is

‘particular society at a particular time and place’. Culture can tell almost every

thing about you. The culture can tell your nationality, where do you live, religion

and your life style – sort of thing.

This paragraph is about the most important thing, who TCKs are. The exact

definition of Third Culture kid is a person who has spent a significant part of his

or her developmental years outside the parents’ culture TCKs are abbreviation of

‘Third Culture Kids’. TCKs are children who spend a lot of times at other

countries and who have grown up at overseas. During living overseas and other

countries, they make their own culture called ‘Third Culture’. Because they

already have a first culture (a culture of the country that they are born and lived)

and they meet a new culture called second culture (this is a culture of other

countries that kid is living right now). Finally, kids mix up these cultures and

they make their own culture called Third Culture. A TCK is a kid who belongs to

their own third culture.

Now, there are some the good things about being become a Third Culture Kid.

First, they are good at adapting to new surrounding, environment because they

move many times during their life. Also they have to learn how to get new

friends easily in new place. Second, they have good relationship all around a

world. Because they have a lot of friends whom they met during their life and

from living all around a world. Also they use a lot of social networks like Face

Book or Skype or other sites. Next good thing is called ‘cultural identify’. TCKs

don’t feel isolated or separated and they are not attached to other culture.

Another advantages of being TCK is, they don’t divide a world by culture. Which

means, they can find common parts easily. They try to find out common parts so

they make bond of each other.

Also there are some of the negative effects by being TCK. They don’t feel sense

of belonging when they go to their hometown. Also they don’t feel comfortable or

feel stability because they didn’t spend a lot of times in their country. They might

get more farther with hometown friend by living out of their home country so

they don’t know what is exactly happening in their country. Because almost all of

them don’t really talk for long time.

I am not sure about what do TCKs feel about other yet because I am not TCK

yet. And I didn’t live a long time out of Korea. So I don’t really have experiments

of being TCK. but I can know they have a lot of negative effects and good things

by my international friends. They talk to each others who is not living close to us

by Skype or Face Book. Also they don’t care about other’s home country when

they make a new friend.

I interviewed one of my friend, Ishant. The questions were ‘what do you think

about TCK?’, ‘what do you feel when if you go back to your hometown ?’, ’What

are bad effects bout being TCK?’ . Ishant said being TCK is interesting and it has

perk. And he feels happy and shy when he sees his friends and go back to his

hometown. Because he haven’t talk to them for long time. Also he answered “The

bad effect of being TCK is I can not stay at one country for long time and I miss

country a lot.“

Studying about a TCK is important because we can understand them easily

when if we meet them in society after we become adult. If you feel ‘this is exactly

about me’ in this essay, then you are TCK. I might be TCK after a while, and I

don’t oppose about being TCK.

<Bibliography>

• unknown / Best Jobs for 2010 / Copyright © 2008-2010. All Rights

Reserved. Best-Career-Match.com / http://www.best-career-

match.com/third-culture-kids.html

• unknown / Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia / This page was last

modified on 1 November 2010 at 22:30. /

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Culture_Kids

• unknown / Library search result - TCK / unknown /

http://www.loc.gov/fedsearch/metasearch/?

cclquery=TCK&search_button=GO#query=(TCK)&filter=pz:id=lcwe

b|ammem|catalog|ppoc|thomas

• Sonnenberg, Brittani/ “How Many Countries are Sitting in this

Classroom?”/ not sure/ not sure/ unknown/ (It is e-book so it has url)

http://www.ceesa.org/handouts2010/SonnenbergHowManyCountries

.pdf

•unknown/ Denizen: a Third Culture Kid magazine/ twiter/

http://www.denizenmag.com/

•Ruch/ Mark/ International Children’s Education /

http://www.iched.org/cms/scripts/page.php?

site_id=iched&item_id=tck_experience

• Dreidger/ Marylou/ EzineArticles Submission - Submit Your Best

Quality Original Articles For Massive Exposure, Ezine Publishers Get

25 Free Article Reprints / http://ezinearticles.com/?Third-Culture-

Kids&id=3669076