TCK Opinions: TCK Influence on others?
I’m currently writing a research paper about the influence of TCKs in an international hospitality school. Just for the basis of introduction, I go to one of these and am constantly struck by the numbers of TCKs and CCKs that I’m surrounded by in a way that ATCKs dream they were.
On the basis that hospitality is a particularly globalizing business, experience with cultures and languages is seen as important. Hospitality schools in general vary on their practice at this, but the Swiss ones do pretty well. They’re often privately owned, taught in English (rather than German or French) and almost entirely populated by non-Swiss. This being the case, they can have over 40 nationalities in their small student body, varying from 200 people to approx. 1000.
However, there’s only so much a school itself can do regarding multicultural interaction. Cultures can segregate themselves along national or regional lines for a variety of reasons. So what role do TCKs play? Being between-cultures, and having open minds and developed social skills, we seem to have the potential to bridge cultural gaps, and encourage closet-CCKs and monocultural people to branch out from their comfort zone.
But given your own personal experience as TCKs, how much do you think we usually do this? I’d just like your opinion about this. TCKs, just as much as anyone else, can stick to what they find comfortable.
Daniel Nguyen-Phuoc
Vietnamese in ethnicity, born in Houston, Texas. Lived in Jakarta, Indonesia for 14 years while going to a British International School to finish with the International Baccalaureate. Survived only two years in the University of Michigan before ending up in Switzerland. Graduated from an international (and that's meant in every word) hospitality college. Interesting life, to be sure. But not the only one.Related Posts
10 Comments to “TCK Opinions: TCK Influence on others?”
March 18th, 2008 at 11:43 am
I think TCKs are more influenced than influential.
We’re usually more open-minded to new ideas than Non-TCKs.
But I think this is changing… the world is gradually becoming more TCK-friendly as compared to 20+ years ago.
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March 18th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
I agree with Brice. Personally I find that I can be influenced quite easily and the fact that we are willing to be influenced proves the concept. Whereas in other cultures, having a self-identity is very important such that even though they will absorb the knowledge of people that are different from them they aren’t very willing to express this in their own behaviors and lifestyles.
I think with the world being globalized, just like Brice said, it may change. I have seen some changes happening to some non-TCKs and they don’t realize it.
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March 18th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
I agree that we are typically more influenced than influential, but I feel that when others are keen to learn about a part of our past that has shaped our everyday lives we have the potential to become very influential.
Example:
When I moved to the US I became really close friends with a boy named Nik. Nik was so fascinated by my up bringing that he started taking International relations classes, learned to speak German very well and even spent a month last summer traveling with me in Europe. I showed him some of my old schools,, houses, and introduced him to some of my friends that were around. For once in my life I was able to share my complicated cultural mix with someone other than my brother. It was amazing.
Anyway, NIk is a German major at University and keeps in contact with the people he meet last summer almost as much as I do.
Our relationship may be rare, but I think it’s a good example of how TCKs can be very influential. Having Nik travel with me and showing him aspects of culture that he couldn’t find in a hotel or resort was a perfect way to bridge a cultural gap.
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March 19th, 2008 at 7:57 am
Hmm this is interesting, i’ll have to say i partially agree, i think when it comes to usual socializing tcks are easily influenced but when it comes to the matter of relationships,worldly issue and like lauren sometimes education, i can say with close friends we can be more influential than we think!
Lauren’s friend is a prime example. and i have a friend back in London after just 2 years of knowing him and hearing some of my stories, the guy has decided to take a gap year and has started to travel around Africa and Europe.
You know how some people say you can help others with their relationships and troubles but for you to handle your own, you simply suck! thats how this topic is to me, we can influence ppl to take certain paths in their relationships and other things because we either knew someone who been through it or we did ourselves.
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March 20th, 2008 at 8:12 am
Great responses, people! Fascinating, really.
My paper is about one of the ways that TCKs can be productive and beneficial members of society, instead of wallowing in self-pity about the things we’ve lost that no one seems to understand about.
Kidding, kidding lah.
So on that note… when it comes to improving a multicultural community, how much do you realistically think TCKs contribute?
What sort of barriers do you think they would encounter?
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March 20th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
“My paper is about one of the ways that TCKs can be productive and beneficial members of society”
I’ll try to tell you what I think about that part…my answer may be a little childish, but still..hehe
I’m majoring in Behavioral Sciences with an emphasis in International Development.I’m a sophomore this year. I think I’ll make a good Int. Development worker because of the fact that I’m a TCK.
Our world is changing so rapidly!! Globalization is spreading EVERYWHERE. Like Friedman says in “The Lexus and the Olive Tree”, Globalization is the new “world order”. So what is Globalization exactly? I understand it (thanks to Friedman’s book) as the spread of the values of the West, mainly in three branches: capitalism and free market enterprise, technology, and information.
(This partly relates to neoconservatism..check out this link: http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm)
It’s not something we can stop, the world is simply becoming a melting pot through a “clash of cultures”.
As TCKs we can be little bridges that help out to smooth the process. The world needs people that are open-minded, culturally empathetic, and intelligent. People that can be in the shoes of other cultures and stand up for their traditions and way of life. It is true that regardless of what we like, change is happening, and it’s happening fast…but as the world becomes globalized we can’t flush thousands of years of traditions down the toilet. We need to help find the balance between tradition and innovation, and as TCKs I believe we are perfect for this job!
As the world becomes more and more globalized different wordlviews clash with each other. We can be the bridges that teach tolerance and empathy to the western worldview, and at the same time give tools to the rest of the world so that they can benefit from change (instead of fear it).
I guess that as TCKs we’re made for all kinds of international jobs, we can be mediators between cultures…we can prevent misunderstandings, we can promote empathy.
Looking at it in a smaller scale…we can definitely influence our friends through our comments, maybe we can blog and share our experiences with others…we can advocate diversity and unity simply by befriending different kinds of people from different backgrounds.
That’s something I like to do. I have friends in the different “clicks” of my school…and that’s one of the reasons why I’m lonely a lot of the time..i don’t belong to a particular group and i’m not really close to anybody.
Anyways, I have friends that are “white”, i do things with the “asians”, i hang out with the “hispanics”, i work with a couple of “black kids”, etc.etc.
For my birthday a few months ago I invited everyone to go bowling…something simple yet fun…and about 50 people showed up.
So we were all there, getting to know one another, having a good time.
I asked people to bring a little money to the “party” because I had a “surprise fund raiser”. Last December I went to Honduras on a mission trip, and while there I met a girl whose family is extremely poor. I’d been dreaming of sending the little girl to school but there was no way for me to do that on my own since i am ABSOLUTELY BROKE! soooo…at my “diverse” birthday party i had all my friends donate a few dollars to give little Mayra a chance to go to school.
I’m happy to say that Mayra is getting an education.
So there’s an example. It wasn’t a BIG thing, but just by being a TCK I was able to branch out and get to know different kinds of people (diversity), get them all together at my birthday (unity), and TOGETHER we did something good for a girl in Honduras.
My point is….there are things we can do. We CAN take advantage of our painful, crazy, lonely experience.
We CAN be useful to society as a whole.
being a TCK is the coolest thing in the world!!!
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March 20th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
dang.
i just realized how long that was.
ssoowwwyyyyy
i just get really passionate about all this.
tehheee….
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March 20th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
I loved The Lexus and the Olive Tree. I really didn’t know that much about economic globalization until I read that in a class called Integrated International Studies, despite being a child of economic globalization, but I recognized a lot of the thinking once I did read it.
And neoconservatism is some scary shit.
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March 24th, 2008 at 12:57 am
My TCK-ness came in handy when I worked at a company based in Minnesota, where a few of the employees were white Americans, a few more were Hispanic Americans (primarily Chicano and New York Puerto Rican), and the majority were Latin Americans from many different countries. Needless to say, there were a lot of cultural misunderstandings. I was often able to see what was going on when there were misunderstandings, and explain it to people. (As in, “He thinks you have finished the project already because of the way you made that comment,” Or even, “Are you sure he meant to say a bad word to you? You know, different words mean different things in different countries. Why don’t you ask him to say it to you in English.”) It got to the point where people would often seek me out when they were misunderstanding each other.
I didn’t contribute to different groups relating to each other, though. To a certain extent they all related anyway. We would eat lunch together and ask each other questions about our ethnic foods and so on. On the other hand, I found that people seemed to feel more comfortable with others like them — myself included. The funny thing about that was that I fit comfortably (familiarly) with about half of the people, for one reason or another.
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March 24th, 2008 at 5:01 am
yes it is!!! makes me feel like someone’s plotting to take over the world…lol
btw..i checked out your website.
liked it a lot!!
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