Adaptation is how we subsist...

             Since the beginning of life, human beings have always been able to adapt. It is a kind of natural behavior in order to survive. Now days, it is easier for young adults to adapt to different environments than adults, because the world that we live in today demands it. Every time we have to change jobs or schools we are required to adapt in order to succeed in the new environment. Throughout history humans adapted to new kinds of food and weather, but now it is much more complicated than that. Besides adapting to food and weather, you also have to adapt to the people and culture that live in the environment, so that you can be able to survive in all aspects of human needs.

            At the micro-level view, there is a model that explains how humans adapt to new environments. This model is called the U-curve model. This model describes that there are three steps that humans do in order to adapt to new environments. First, we tend to go through the stage of anticipation, which is when we start to discover exciting things about the host’s culture. Personally, I think that everyone that has had the experience to move from one country to another has been excited when you first encounter the new culture. The second step would be culture shock. After experiencing all the excitement of the new things that you are learning, then you start to realize that you are totally unfamiliar with the environment and that is when you have a culture shock. For some people it is really hard to overcome the fact that they feel uncomfortable in the new environment and they tend to give up by frustrating and blocking any kind of help. For others, it is hard at first until they realize that they have to adjust to the new culture in order to survive or feel good about where they live. This final step is called adjustment; it is when we negotiate the vernal and nonverbal codes, values and norms of the new culture.

            As I mentioned before, young adults tend to adapt faster than adults. I believe that this happens because we were born into a world where adaptation it’s an important factor of subsistence. You can see the differences between kids and adults, on how much faster kids tend to adapt. I think this happens just because adults have lived with their culture for a long time and it is hard for them to let go or to feel that the new culture that they are experiencing is ok. As humans, I think that we all go through the same steps in order to adapt to new environments, it could be new countries, jobs or schools. As we may know, it is important to be able to adapt to new surroundings, because if we don’t we are not going to be able to be reach that happiness that we need in order to survive in any given situation.