Proud To Go To American

As of today, it has been exactly one month since I entered American University as a student. In only thirty-two days, I have participated in the freshman service experience, begun my first college classes, transitioned into living on my own, and have met (literally) hundreds of new people.

One of the most commonly asked questions during welcome week was “Where are you from?” While the most common answers were clustered in the Northeast United States, I was surprised at how many international students I met. Germany, France, China, Kosovo, Philippines, India, Spain, Japan, Vietnam, England, Nigeria, Egypt—there seemed to be no country that wasn’t represented at this university.

I bring this up because the idea of separate histories introduced in chapter 4 is definitely applicable to my experiences with intercultural communication at American University. Although most of the history described refers to written history, every single person has a political, intellectual, social, family, national, and culture-group history that he brings wherever he goes. In my sociology class, we refer to this as one’s “social location”. So when I have a conversation with Cindy from Japan about how our classes are going, we may say the same thing but we both have lived completely different lives that lead us to this conclusion. Consider the following example. I might say my classes are rather simple because all my life, I have grown up in a nurturing family that emphasized academics and schoolwork, while surrounded by peers who shared similar interests and academic levels, while living in an excellent public school system, under a president who made education his number one priority. Cindy might consider her current classes at AU easy because she grew up in a strict, overbearing family that forced her to study nonstop in a competitive academic atmosphere, in a country where getting the highest test scores are the key to living a successful life.

In the textbook, Martin and Nakayama discuss how “people bring four elements of personal history to intercultural interactions”. These four things are childhood experience, historical myths, language competence, and memories of recent political events. These all came into play in my first interactions with international students. The hardest thing to overcome was historical myths; no matter how hard I tried, I would always associate certain traits with certain countries/nationalities.

Understanding multiple histories is essential for effective communication; as well as a good understanding of one’s own social location. This is easier said than done. It is impossible to research the backgrounds of everyone one meets, and frankly, it is pointless. In my opinion, the solution is education. First, kids should be exposed to more international education, whether this be starting foreign language study earlier or learning about world cultures in more depth and detail than the typical curriculum allows for. I was only allowed to take French starting in 7th grade and my world geography/history classes were very minimal; as a result, my language proficiency and general knowledge about world affairs is much lower than I feel it should be. I also feel that we, as a collective society, should make broader attempts to reach across borders and immerse ourselves in other cultures. For students, this can be as small of a step as sitting at a different table at TDR. Our school has more diversity and internationalism than most colleges, but it seems like we, myself included, don’t take advantage of this. We’re missing out on so much.