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.
Lindsay McKinley
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2 Comments to “Unconscious sensitivities…”
July 22nd, 2008 at 6:20 pm
It’s amazing what living aboard can do to you before the developmental years are over isn’t it?
You’ve been in the States for 14 years and expected to be as American as any American can be and then right in the middle of self-discovery you left the US only for a short while. Who knew a short stay outside of your “home” (5 years vs 14 years) can create a lot of changes
And welcome to TCKid!
Here’s your LOLcat welcome picture
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July 22nd, 2008 at 10:14 pm
“…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.”
I don’t think it’s good manners even in America to wake-up your roommate when you come home ‘drunk’ and expect her to talk to you - and then to criticize your room mate saying she comes from some backward benighted country where they live in ‘huts’. Well maybe she didn’t use those words but she’s certainly insinuating it.
Basically she’s insinuating that civilized people would wake-up to talk to their drunk roommates or would have gone to have a wild drunken night of sex, drugs and whatever else at a fraternity in the first place so would have been awake to share the ‘fun’ experience.
If I were the roommate I guess I would have woken up because (I’m a light sleeper and) she was being inconsiderate and noisy and would have ended up talking to her but I find her passive aggressive behavior is a big turn off for me.
(I’m getting old and cranky with people these days though…so don’t listen to me. lol)
I guess in reality she was lonely because she didn’t have a roommate she could talk to all night (probably about boys) but turning this around to make derogatory comments about foreigners is really uncool.
I think that sometimes we give in too much to obnoxious behavior and excuse it on the grounds of our not understanding some culture.
Problem is there are always ways of dealing with things you don’t like hearing in any culture - but we don’t know what these are often so we don’t react in the normal way either.
I can’t think of a good example now but people sometimes say things that sound pretty rude to each other in jest - but they can do this because they know where the boundaries of what’s acceptable and what’s not are. TCKs usually don’t know where exactly the line is so we go on default and end-up being very polite instead.
On another note, I think you handled the situation in a very diplomatic way.
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