One of the major difficulties of being an international student is navigating a foreign culture. It isn’t so much culture shock as difference in experience and context, such that we approach things from a different perspective, or misunderstand the significance of certain issues. This can be both good and bad -- we might stumble a bit at the start, but it’s arguable that in the long run this exposure is part of the appeal of studying overseas.
To share some personal context, I’m a freshman at the University of California, Berkeley, intending to major in Media Studies and Data Science. In other words, at the time of writing this, I haven’t actually set foot on campus yet. But even over 3am Zoom discussion sections, I can see a gap in culture and context that bleeds over into academics and course content, independent of the more social aspect of culture shock. This is partly driven by the fact that UC Berkeley requires all undergraduates to take at least one American Cultures (AC) course “designed to critically engage in important issues within the United States by helping students develop a deeper understanding of race, culture, and ethnicity in the context of American society.” In this case, how does being an international student add or subtract value from one’s experience in the US?
Difference as Discomfort
To adjust for the particularities of my situation, like my school’s AC requirement, its general history, and where it’s located (more on this later), I reached out to a few Wah! Seniors to get a better idea of what it’s like across the board. In general, US-centric courses make international students more conscious of their difference or lack of cultural context, and in that way can be both eye-opening and uncomfortable at times.
Chung Yi See, a third-year at Harvard, brought up an example of a course called “Using Big Data to Solve Economic and Social Problems”, which detailed how data could be used to address some uniquely American problems, particularly that of socio-economic inequality. He said it was a bit of a shock to him, that “partisan issues manifest themselves in socio-economic issues” in the US, and that it’s just widely accepted as the way things are. In Singapore, we’re used to having policies put in place, where the government naturally follows through. Even in terms of economic ideology, there seems to be a singular, conservative one in Singapore, whereas in the US there is even a partisan divide within academics, referring to policies via figureheads, like “Reagan-era policies” or “Obama-era healthcare”. Seeing the actual impact on and application of academic concepts in a contemporary context is arguably the whole point of college, as a departure from the pre-tertiary education way of looking at fact and knowledge as static and purely academic. But the context that this course content is being applied to here isn’t a context that we are familiar with, much less claim as our own. And while this may not apply to my interviewees’ experiences to the same extent, I’ve seen much of that US-centrism in my course content, particularly as an intended Media Studies major. My major prerequisites include: American Politics, American History, American Sociology/Anthropology. Not everyone is going to take what’s essentially a crash course on American culture in about a year -- as far as I’m aware, no one else in my batch of Singaporean Bears are doing this -- but I’ve found that it has genuinely impacted my understanding of, and comfort within, the US culture.
“Be aware: When you go there, you’re not going there to just have some intellectual discourse in a vacuum… there are people who you’re going to meet who are living these real, everyday issues” – Chung Yi
Chung Yi went on to say that while that course on big data was interesting to him, it was an altogether different experience for his American friends. It was “eye-opening for them in a different way, because they had never realised these things about their own country”. He’s also doing a minor in Vietnamese, where the course not only teaches language, but roots itself in the Vietnamese-American diaspora and their immigrant experience. He shared that he’s engaged with the course content but more because of academic interest, versus the other Vietnamese-American students in class, who are learning their own mother tongue for the first time in an academic setting, who are learning about “who they are, and who they’re supposed to be”. This division between academic interest and personal investment might not really impact one’s experience, as in Chung Yi’s case, but for me it has definitely been uncomfortable at times. In a class called “Media, Power and Resistance”, we had to write about pieces of media and visual art that directly address the oppression and empowerment of minority groups. How was I supposed to make claims about the black experience, or the indigenous communities, without having ever met any member of their communities in real life? How was I supposed to make claims about their experience when I have not only no claim to that experience, but not even a claim to the cultural and geographical context of that experience? This was definitely exacerbated by Zoom University in general, but it was a distinctly uncomfortable feeling. Moreover, as Chung Yi brought up, learning about one’s own culture in an academic setting can be eye-opening. And so, are we missing out when we leave Singapore to study other people’s culture and experiences?
Difference as Opportunity
My conversation with Rhe-Anne Tan, a fourth-year at Columbia, could perhaps propose an answer. That gap in experience and cultural context should be seen as something more than to avoid or erase.
Even as international students, we want to become part of the campus community, and that “behooves you to be aware of what the issues of the day are”, from both sensitivity standpoint -- like not saying anything hurtful or ignorant -- but also “to be committed to a vision of justice no matter where you are”. Perhaps coming into this with a perspective premised upon being international and therefore different, concretises that gap, and prevents us from making the most of our experiences. That initial unfamiliarity or discomfort should be “used as a starting point to develop a more critical angle of understanding” on issues that feature prominently in American social culture, like that of critical race theory, and systemic oppression of minority groups. Our outsider’s perspective doesn’t disqualify us from asking “Where do I fit into this social fabric?” and “As an international student, what kind of race or class privilege do I have?”
“Be willing to not just learn new things, but unlearn things you assumed to be true. Everyone says to be open-minded, but once you’re there, you will genuinely understand what open-minded means. There will be new perspectives, and you will need to be able to synthesize them yourself.” – Rhe-Anne
Thus, the international student experience can be a huge opportunity to learn to navigate difference and diversity, but only if one is open-minded enough to seize it. When I chose to study at the University of California, Berkeley, I did it thinking that I knew what the social culture in the United States is like -- we’ve all seen the Tweets, watched the Youtube videos, read the breaking news. Cal has a strong culture of student activism, tied to both its long history and the fact that it’s located in the US’s bluest state. And as someone planning to major in something that touches on art and media, I expected the discussions, the off-handed comments, and the shared assumptions. But as Rhe-Anne said, there’s “a big difference between intellectual knowledge and learning to integrate it into your behaviour”. You can be “aware that institutional racism is a thing”, but what does it look like? How do you take that into account when you interact with people of colour, or lead teams with people of colour? In her words, “A lot of Singaporeans don’t have the background doing that, because they’ve never had to -- they know they should, that it’s important, but learning the skill? I think that’s acquired over time.” And not only time, but also experience -- and that’s a key opportunity that international students in the US are exposed to.
Difference as Balance
Of course, that doesn’t obligate everyone to be an activist. A second-year at Yale i interviewed highlighted that there are limits to our experiences as international students that mean that we “cannot represent (others’) experiences or speak of them as if we know”, particularly when it comes to contemporary issues. There are lines that shouldn’t be crossed, and figuring out where those lie is part of the learning. They shared that during the Yale admission lawsuit about discrimination against Asian and white Americans by the Trump administration, the student council asked the Malaysian and Singaporean Association to be signee on its statement. But after discussion, they decided to decline to sign, because they felt that “as a body of international students, it’s weird to represent the whole society and comment on ‘American’ issues”, though it would be fine to endorse the cause as individuals.
“There's this quote from this Korean dramaDae Jang Geum that I really remembered: ‘Be a blank sheet of paper. That's how you learn.’ Your college journey is 100% what you make of it.” – Yale sophomore
Then again, even if one doesn’t participate in activism directly, or attempts to walk the line between learning more about versus claiming others’ experiences, one can still be engaged in the community. This calls back to what Chung Yi said about academic interest versus personal stake: engaging with academics, like history and philosophy, can actually help us have conversations without being afraid of stepping on others’ toes, because it’s more hypothetical. And even within a more activist campus culture, there are spaces for a mix of intellectual and contemporary issues that international students can feel comfortable engaging in. An example on Yale’s campus would be the Yale Political Union, which is its central forum for political discussion and activism. There are also seminars and book clubs, spaces where any and all are welcome.
In the end, in the wise words of my graduate student instructor last semester, “We all know differently.” The international student experience is one that involves foreignness and discomfort and unfamiliarity by nature -- even more so in the US where things are so different, and the issues so personal to our peers. What matters, then, isn’t trying to fit in, or assuming and therefore concretising our difference, but instead meeting all these new experiences and new people with honesty and openness.
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