My culture

When defining culture Merriam-Webster describes it as "a particular society that has its own beliefs, ways of life, art, etc." Culture is the type of group or community an individual identifies with or how others may define them as. No matter if it’s a large group or a more defined subgroup everyone has societies. With each group the individuals who relate to the common subject, have common knowledge on something or someone that outsiders who are not a part of the group would not know about.

The first group I identify with is being raised by a single parent. Many individuals raised by single parents   have gone through certain hardships and adversity that someone raised in a two parent household would not understand.  Being raised by a single mother definitely was challenging at times for example not being able to go to the father daughter dances at school because my father wasn't in the picture like my classmates. Although my mother allowed me to get involved in any and everything I wanted we did have to sacrifice certain weekend activities like my other friends. I was involved in all-star cheerleading for almost eleven years, all-star cheerleading is not a cheap sport at all and because of that I wasn't able to get every new pair of shoe I wanted or go shopping every week like my classmates. The fact that I was raised in single parent household also affects my values in life. I definitely value family and marriage more than others because I've experienced being a victim of divorce and don't want that to happen to my future children.

The second group I identify with is cheerleading. Being a cheerleader for eleven years, I pretty much know everything about cheer there is too know. To outsiders cheerleading is easy sport, some would even say it is a hobby, but to the insiders it so much more.  The cheerleading world has terminology and sub groups that many people are unaware of. There are four subgroups within the sport of cheerleading. The groups are community cheerleading, high school cheerleading, college cheerleading and all-star cheerleading.  For many all-star cheerleaders, high school cheerleading is a hobby and we don’t take it very seriously. All-star cheerleaders typically have a higher skill level than other subcategories of cheerleading because they have more freedom on what level of difficulty they choose for their team.  All-star cheerleading is strictly preforming at competitions and exhibitions. When I was all-star cheerleading we were on the road almost every weekend for a new competition from October to April, which is the typical all-star competition season.

 Cheerleading terminology is literally a foreign language to outsiders. Depending on what subgroup of cheer, the terminology can be more extensive. With community cheerleading and high school cheerleading they may use more of the basic cheer terms because they aren’t allowed to do many of the higher risk stunts and tumbling. Because of the limitations for community and high school cheerleading they usually aren’t taught the higher difficulty terms. With all-star and college teams there is definitely an expectation on knowing the various terms because these teams are more focused on having a higher risk stunt to impress judges and expect their team’s members to already have background knowledge on the basics. With college and all-star teams, they have more freedom to do higher level stunts and tumbling so their cheerleading vocab is substantially large compared to community and high school cheerleaders.  
Here are some example

 

 

No matter what subgroup of cheerleading an individual may be in, cheerleaders almost always have another cheerleader’s back. Many outsiders of cheerleading, view cheerleading as an afterschool activity but all cheerleaders know how serious cheer can be. Cheerleading is one of the most dangerous sports to be involved in and has a high amount of deaths and injuries each year. According to United States Sports Academy, which is a American college that offers sports field related majors, listed cheerleading as the top female dominated sport and ranked number two for most catastrophic injuries in all American sports in 2011.  Cheerleaders of all backgrounds may look at each other differently, but will always defend cheerleading as a sport. Cheerleading is one of the groups that no matter what level or how long you were cheering, once a cheerleader always a cheerleader.