identification
Ok, now I know people you’re close to- where ever you may be- want to identify with you. I don’t know though, maybe it’s a pet peeve of mine but I hate it when those whom you don’t consider to be similar to, you try to say they are.
I’m sorry but moving twice to a new high school or within the same location doesn’t qualify you to understand the TCK experience. I don’t want to be arrogant about it but it is just not the same thing as being allover the place!! I also don’t want to ‘invalidate’ or belittle their experiences but good lord, they have no idea, and if you try to explain this, they still don’t get it. I just feel guilty and annoyed with this happens. It’s like, why is this conversation even happening?!! Has anyone ever experienced this?
Amy Elizabeth White
Grew up in Louisiana, Ohio, NC, Texas, Florida, Wash St. Kansas, Jamaica, Germany and DC. As an adult I have also lived in Romania, Australia, Colorado and Virginia. Lots of UK connections. At the moment I live in the VA-DC metro area; a quality place but not decisively where I want to live forever. I went to three high schools in three countries; and I know I'm 'better' for it as experiences like this don't grow on trees. I'm an only child, of an Army Officer. I of course love to travel! I was a Peace Corps Volunteer- and I highly recommend it to all Americans with drive and passion. I recently got my MA, and I hope to be in the Dept of State as a Foreign Service Officer someday.Related Posts
5 Comments to “identification”
July 9th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
wow this is soo typical… in US honestly, they r like “we have students from all 50 states at our university” and i am like…is tat supposed to mean you are totally multicultral and amazing or sumthing? because i honestly dunt think tat’s special…
and honestly, if we sound arrogant to them, then we will sound arrogant to them here. because ppl here actually noe wt we r talking about.
yah seriously i hate it when they try so hard to make me one of them.
they r like the european invaders, they go to a new place, meet new ppl and immediately try to tell them “in our culture we exercise christianity and everything non-christian is paganism blahblahblah” (no not reli but tat’s just an exaggerated example. and if u ask them to consider that maybe they r the ones who need to learn about local culture…they will look at you so weird as if you just asked them to swallow a lizard.
ppl r selfish. they r.
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July 9th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
haha I can relate…
Once, I was introduced to a kid who said that he was from “all over” and when I asked him to be more specific, he named roughly 10 states. I wanted to laugh.
Another time, I was trying to explain how coming back to places I lived in before (I did it only once and suffered from shock for weeks afterwards) is a rough experience because you realize that you and that location have drifted apart. The mono who I was talking to said that she could relate because when she came back home from out-of-town-same-state college, she found some construction changes and realized that the town changed without her… I don’t think she understood what I was talking about exactly.
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July 10th, 2008 at 2:21 am
In some cases (note the ’some’ ^^), maybe this person’s just trying to find some common ground with you - so you can acknowledge the common parts, i.e. like having to make new friends in a new school all over again….and then you can ignore the part where there’s a difference as wide as the Great Rift Valley, i.e. the cultural differences involved in your move and hardly involved in theirs if at all. Avoid discussion regarding the ‘uncommon ground’ and try to move the topic to the ‘common ground’.
In some cases - the other person is trying to belittle the magnitude of your problems by downsizing it to what they know.
“Oh it happens to everyone you move around from town A to town B (within the same state) and it’s not big deal.”
In such a case, just ignore their comments :p Be nice, but let it go in through one ear and let it go right out the other because you’re wasting your breath trying to explain something they can’t understand.
If you need to talk about it to people who do understand, post here like you have already.
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July 10th, 2008 at 3:52 am
Remember that while shifting cultures is an IMPORTANT aspect of our experience, often mobility and the lack of stability also shapes you.
I haven’t moved around a lot, but a lot of TCKs have never spent more then a few years in any one place. These people can, at least, relate with the moving, if not necessarily the shifting of cultures and all the rest that gives you.
And Ayako has a point when they’re just trying to find something in common with you. This is a really common way of making new friends in the US.
But of course, anyone writing off your moving around the world to be the same as moving cities within the same country is probably partially ignorant of just how much of a move it can be, but ignorance is the problem here, not necessarily arrogance.
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July 13th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
@the nomad HAHAHAHA tat’s hillarious!
@uncle dan…lol of course they arent arrogant, they think we are arrogant! hahahaa
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