This year is my second year at Mount Holyoke College and my third year in the States. Yet even after so much time here, there are still moments when I realize how culturally different Americans are, and I feel like screaming, “I don’t belong here!”
I contacted my friend Dmitry, who is finishing his third semester as a Fulbright Fellow at Iowa State University, to ask him how he was feeling about American academics so far.
We both went to university in the same city in Russia, so I thought it would be fun to compare notes. As it turned out, we didn’t always agree on how the American style of education is different from what we’d experienced before, or why.
Here’s our conversation on:
- Classroom behavior
- The relationship with professors
- Personal conversations
- Homework and grading
(click to jump to that section)
On classroom behavior
Anna: I will never forget when in my first year in the U.S. a girl sat next to me in the front row of a morning class and, as the professor was speaking, put her breakfast on the table and started eating. First, she peeled an egg. Then she spread jam on her toast slowly. I thought to myself: “Oh my god, I hope the professor won’t notice!”
It felt so awkward to me and all I wanted at that moment was for the professor not to notice her eating. Later I learned that in an American classroom eating and drinking are totally acceptable and it doesn’t upset me anymore when I see Mount Holyoke students eating their breakfast or lunch in class.
In one of my classes at my Russian university I felt thirsty and went to get a drink. I wasn’t even going to drink it in class; I just put it on my table. However, when the professor noticed that, she paused to scold me. Yes, right in the middle of her lesson!
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