I am a student of the Ohio State University in Columbus OH, Midwest region of the United States of America. I am a student in one of the largest university in this country. I am an international student in a foreign land. In this blog I will write about how I try to make, this New World my home.
There are no true ways to measure people. No arbitrary generalization or stereotype can serve as an absolute definition of a society, not the least in diverse America. So to get a feeling of this place I needed to understand my own feeling and analyze my experiences. So through my story at OSU, I try to bring out what my new home, truly means.
I am an engineering major and this makes most of my classes Science or Math based. Additionally as an honors student I end up meeting most of the smarter people in the college. The classes are liberal and the students self dependent. So, one stereotype of Americans as being fiercely individualistic is proved to an extent to be true. It is almost as if no one wants to know much about anyone else s business. This might be in a way good, but I fail to see how ever competition might arise if no one seeks out rivals. The best answer I can offer myself is that they compete with themselves and use averages or numbers as targets. Sounds weird but this is the norm of a new world.
Then again the society is as dynamic as the American stock market and this justifies the saying, “only in America”. From college students pioneering research to underage binge drinkers who completely lose control, the college society is plagued and yet gifted by some of the most vicious and virtuous traits. This mess can only be characterized as sardonic or regretfully amusing by an outsider. The conflict is caused by less of an issue of lose morale and more of the need to keep an external prudish image. For all the fun they strive to have, college kids strive equally hard to maintain a crisp image that might be diametrically opposite to their character.
Cultural differences to what I am used to is abundant. Relationships for starters are treated much more carefully and if I care to add ‘properly’. Unlike the laissez faire I was used to for most of my life, America where everything seems to go, also has some unsaid rules of its own. Learning the ropes have been hard, painful even and managing the complexities of relationships challenging. For what can be considered proper or even apt somewhere else in the world, can and is probably considered weird on this side of the planet. So as I feel my way through this intricate but gossamer web of society I hope to come out at worst with a bruised eye and a broken heart. Nothing too permanent I hope. At worst I could always do what the French do; Parley!
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