About: Lindsay

Name:Lindsay
2008-07-22 15:09:20
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Unconscious sensitivities…

Hey there - So I haven’t really read through all of this yet, but so far I’m loving this site, especially the Meetup section - fantastic idea!I actually found tckid by a Google search this morning. But I’ll get to that in a sec…I’m an American who spent my entire life in the US up until the age of 14, when my step-father got a job at the Uni of Amsterdam. The next five years were spent in The Netherlands and then I came back to Virginia (where I was from) for college. The school I went to in NL was international, but basically all British/Dutch - so I was forever defending my country to all of my classmates…a situation that led to an intense idolization of the US that, let’s face it, no country could ever live up to. The shock I felt when I moved back here basically landed me into a freshman year depression that only started to lift when I moved into an international dorm the next year. But I began to feel stifled and so spent the a summer studying in England and a semester in Scotland…which wasn’t nearly enough, if you ask me.Flash-forward to now and I’ve been in NYC for five years - the longest I’ve been anywhere since age 14, and I’m beginning to feel incredibly restless. All in all, though, I thought I had begun to acclimate pretty well to life in the US (NYC doesn’t hurt in that situation, either…) - and I certainly thought I was over any sensitivity I might have accrued after moving back here for college and the ensuing emotional roller coaster that followed. But then, this morning, I was in my coworker’s office (who had just recently graduated college) and we were talking about freshman roommates. She began this story about how hers was horrible and they had nothing in common, etc, etc, etc - and the first explanation she used to try and illustrate her point was that her roommate was from Nepal and (exact words) “lived in a hut.” So while my coworker would come home drunk after hitting the frats, her roommate would be in bed and wouldn’t really talk. Honestly, I don’t even know where it came from, but I guess it just hit a nerve and I went off on how I couldn’t believe that had been her attitude and didn’t she realize how alone/confused her roommate probably was? Later we were talking about it and I apologized, explaining that it’s hard for me to hear things like that because I was more like her roommate in that situation than her - and we both felt better after explaining our differing perspectives.But it got me thinking that I must be more affected by my time overseas than I had originally thought - and that’s how I found this website. Anyway, not really sure if this is a post that can really garner comments, but I do find it interesting that even after almost ten years back in the States, I suppose I still don’t feel fully “American.”The characteristics listed for tckids on this site, by the way, are extremely interesting to read. When I moved back to the States I felt more mature than the other Americans at my school and yet I feel a bit more immature now (AKA: a lot of my classmates are getting married and I can’t even imagine being in that situation). Also - the restless feeling syndrome? Definitely have that one.

July 22, 2008 | Filed Under General Forum | 2 Comments