Week #4

I don’t really know cultural cues are, which makes it pretty difficult to write about. In terms of culture, it is also difficult to write. Living in Midtown and working in Downtown, I have not really been exposed to much of the city of Detroit. At work, we have a strict, corporate culture where meetings must be formalized by email invitation and slack is the mode of communication. To me, Downtown does not have much of a culture. We learned about the monuments and their significance during our tour, but people walk past those monuments every day without a second glance. I am sure the majority of people do not know their value beyond aesthetics. Downtown is defined by its business culture. Everyone is dressed business casual. The streets are almost empty until noon, the lunch rush. Everyone is 30 or older. The only young people are Quicken Loans interns. Yet all these business people seem to be dis-proportionally white.  However, I think our office is the exception; 4 of the 7 people in the office are black and from Detroit. But it seems HPN’s corporate culture has prevented us from really getting close with many of our coworkers.

I believe that it is still early in the internship, and this trend will change. Zoe and I have yet to meet with the leaders of different services, but I am sure that we will pick up on cultural cues then.