What is “rush week” at an American university? Aditi Bhowmick, a writer for International Student Voice, went through rush at Cornell University, and had this unusual description of the phenomenon:

Rush week is basically seven days when one will see the most number of girls you have ever seen in your entire lives trudging through snow ridges.

In plainer terms, “rush” is the process of applying to join a fraternity or sorority.  In a typical sorority rush, all the potential pledges visit each sorority house, participating in activities and meeting the sorority sisters, as the sororities figure out who they want to take and the pledges figure out where they want to join.  Aditi explained her rush week like this:

…if nothing else, rush week is exciting. As you pass through the doors a sister will sweep you into the most picture perfect parlors. For all you know, you could be starring in a Victorian play where your coats are taken and the most creative drinks are served in champagne glasses. One gets to meet an army of upperclass-women and have conversations about everything from the weather to theses on biology and neuroscience! I have never been so polite and well-mannered in my entire life; my mother would be proud.

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Our campus after snowstorm Nemo hit on Friday

Three weeks into the spring semester and guess what? A major snowstorm, called snowstorm Nemo, has already hit and my college had to shut down operations. Yes, I definitely enjoyed the lazy day thoroughly, but the cold? Not so much.

I was a spring admit, so I got to America towards the end of December last year. However, since 2011 was such a mild winter, I really did not get to experience the New England weather that everyone kept talking about. Yes, it did snow. And yes, it was a very new experience for me. However, for the most part the cold was bearable, and I was just about fine with how the semester went.

This year I got to experience the full force of the snow. You can see how deep it was.

This year turned out to be a very different experience though. The very day I got back from my winter break, which I spent further south in Washington, D.C.,, I found myself very much under-dressed for the cold that had hit New England. The first week of classes turned out to be a disaster with the temperature falling as low as one degree on one of the days. Classes were not cancelled (people here are used to it) and I was left with no other option but to trudge in the cold.

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An ad for the movie Pitch Perfect. Is this how Americans think of Asians?

Recently I went to see a movie called “Pitch Perfect” with Emanuele, one of my best American friends.

“How did you feel about that?” she asked me on our way to the parking lot. We pushed the door and walked into freezing wind.

“Well, yes I think that is pretty much it. It’s true,” I said.

I knew exactly what she was asking.

In the movie there are two Asian girls: One speaks in a really quiet voice and has a weird accent; the other only hangs out with people from her own country and hates American food and culture. It feels like they are so different and somehow crazy.

“That is how some Americans think of Asians, right?” I asked.

“Well, to some degree, yes,” my friend Emanuele said. She said some Americans don’t like Asians because they don’t understand them. “Sometimes they don’t even know anybody from Asia,” she said. “They learned it from movies and other pop culture.”

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Going to an American college football game during my first, action-packed semester at Maryland

After conquering my first action-packed semester in the US, when I returned for my second after the Christmas break I expected to come back almost victorious. I had overcome all the nerves I had felt before I first came, and had had an incredible few months.

Instead, upon returning to campus I was hit by the same feelings of detachment and homesickness that I thought I thought had been dealt with.

I loved every second of my first semester in America. All the fear I felt when I first arrived four months ago had dissipated by the time I was set to make my first trip home to spend Christmas break with my family. In fact, it was going home to England that had me filled with a strange nervous excitement.

The comfort of visiting home

I had arrived in America with no plans at all, and with no expectation of what was to come. All I knew was that, as an exchange student who is only here for one academic year, I wanted to make the most of the experience before it ended in May.

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Where would I find my new home in the US?

When I started this year at school, I knew my ideal living situation couldn’t last much longer. I had come over to the U.S. with my parents, and had lived with them for most of my education, but now they were moving back to Indonesia and I had only a few months to figure out where to live for my final semester of university.

Finding a new “home sweet home” was not easy. Each time I thought I had a plan, my attempt failed and I was back to the drawing board. I explored a lot of different options, and learned a lot about the pros and cons of each.

I’m happy to report that I did find a place to live. But which option did I choose? Find out at the end!

Option 1: Living with a Host Family

Moving in with my parents’ friends from the Indonesian community here was my first thought, and the obvious choice. It would be a lot cheaper than getting a place on my own, it would be safer, and it would probably be the easiest option as well.

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The unique world of college. Is it a four year break from the real world or a preparation to join adult society? Does it matter? (Creative Commons photo by Flickr user Barbara – Jorbasa)

“The situation in the Middle East is getting even more complicated. Hamas just doesn’t want to sit down at the negotiation table. They are terrorists. They should stop killing Israeli civilians.”

“But you can’t blame one side for all the atrocities that are happening. The Israeli government also should stop bombing Gaza strip and killing all innocent children, women, and men. Besides, for many Palestinians Hamas is a freedom fighter.”

“Well, yeah, but what do you say when Hamas uses school children as shields. Obviously many children will be killed.”

“But don’t you think …”

And so goes a typical conversation with my friends at my university. Here we are, a group of college kids, analyzing the situation in the Middle East, appointing the next U.S. President, and discovering the best solutions for global issues with as much seriousness as if we were making the policies ourselves, and as much authority as if we were Ban Ki Moon himself – our knowledge drawn from that one political science or history class we took last semester.

And then, in the next breath, our conversations subconsciously move to classes, drugs or sex.

That’s the thing about our crazy college life. It’s supposed to be preparing us for our futures, for living in the real world, but so much of it approaches the surreal instead. Are we approaching our education correctly by allowing ourselves to fall down a metaphorical rabbit hole? When I try to think about the answer, my brain dissolves into a muddy mess filled with more questions than answers.

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A multicolored student body (Creative Commons photo by Flickr user airsoenxen)

Being in a multiracial environment changes how you view yourself and the world. Whatever your race is, when you are surrounded by people of another race, you become more aware of your color, your looks, your accent, and the people who you ‘belong to.‘

You start to see that the world is divided by subtle differences, study then learn to acknowledge those differences, and eventually start to appreciate the great diversity that surrounds you.

Growing up, I was only exposed to people of white skin. I had barely even met people of another color. One of my main motivations for studying in the United States was the multiracial environment the country offers, which I knew would be a new kind of challenge. I was looking forward to getting a better understanding of how different races interact, and seeing how I would react in a multiracial environment. And while I knew this could mean seeing negative examples of race relations as well, I didn’t really have an idea beyond what I had seen in media of how racism manifests.

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I never expected to be a victim of hate speech at a progressive institution like Bates College.  I had heard hate speech before – “Bitch!” “Fag!” “Nigger!” “Cracker!” – but it was always something people shrugged off, convincing ourselves it was okay because we did not want to speak up.  It was a traumatizing experience when, for the first time in my short life, someone used a racial slur directly at me.

It was a Saturday night and my roommates and I were chatting when a young lady walked into our room. I had seen her at one of the many orientation programs for incoming students and we sometimes hung out on her floor. Except for those encounters and the occasional hellos we exchanged around campus, I did not know her. She waved hello to us from the doorway and then closed the door to our room to chat to her friends who were outside.

A few seconds later, I laughed at something one of my roommates had said and I guess she thought I was laughing at her because she walked back into the room, looked at me, and asked, “Why are you laughing, nigger?”

It took my mind a few seconds to process what had happened. Then it registered. She had used a racial slur and it was directed to me. Realizing the gravity of the matter, her girlfriends forcefully pulled her out of our room. I was left upset and confused.

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There’s something that tends to happen every Saturday morning in my house.

In our respective rooms, we wake up early, usually to the sound of one another’s stirrings. Someone goes to the bathroom, brushes his or her teeth, starts to get ready. Eventually, when we’re all awake and have our doors open, one of us will emerge, hair tousled, eyes lidded with sleep, and say, “So, how was your night?”

Although my housemates and I usually begin our evenings at the same party, we often drift off our own ways, either to other parties, back to our rooms, or to other people’s rooms. Asking what happened last night is the process of filling in the gaps, and our answers vary: sometimes we’ll talk about who we hung out with or ran into, and sometimes we’ll talk about who we hooked up with.

[International student opinions on partying at U.S. colleges]

It’s funny to think that hooking up – something that now seems so ordinary and so ingrained in my university’s party culture – used to be wholly unfamiliar to me. Prior to coming to the U.S., I had never heard or known of the concept.

A completely different culture

I grew up in a culture where sex definitely happened, but was never discussed. You didn’t talk about sex or physical desires, and you never saw any hints of it on TV or the media.

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In the few days before 2012 ends and 2013 begins, we’ll be looking back at some of our top posts from the past year, starting with number five and counting down to number one.  If you missed these articles the first time around, now’s your time to see why we’ve found these particular pieces so compelling.

#5
On Being an African in the US: Navigating an Endless Web of Stereotypes
by Simba Runyowa

One of our most read, and most thought-provoking, pieces from 2012 was Simba’s moving look at how Africans are perceived in the U.S., and his plea for a more balanced perspective.

Harare, Zimbabwe. Would an American know that this is Africa? (Creative Commons photo by Flickr user Martin Addison)

“Do you live in a ‘real’ house back in Zimbabwe?” Simba said he’s been asked. “Do people have cars in Africa?” “How come you speak such good English?”

Read it: “On Being an African in the US: Navigating an Endless Web of Stereotypes“

But, he added:

While these comments all made me cringe inwardly in disbelief, none of them topped a remark I received while eating in the college dining hall early this semester, when somebody (Let’s call him Boy Z) remarked, ‘It must hurt you to see people throwing away food when so many people in Africa are starving.’

“It’s high time the world moves beyond these parochial, dated frames and seriously reorients the way it engages with African people,” Simba concluded, adding that while Africa certainly has its problems, so does America.

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Running at night (Photo: Reuters)

One of the first things I noticed when I got to school in Virginia was how many people ran outside.  They seemed to be everywhere, at all times of day or night – people jogging through the main quad, students walking around in exercise gear, traffic jams as runners tried to navigate through slower-moving students on their way to class.

I was not a sporty person before I came here.  My high school life was pretty hectic, and when I had time away from schoolwork I was too tired to work out.  Even when I went to college in China and had a bit more spare time, working out was not part of my regular routine.

Coming to university here totally challenged my belief that working out is something you only do when you have lots of free time.  I hear my friends say, “I have so much work to do,” and then a minute later, “I’m going for a run.”

One of my housemates is incredibly busy during the day, so she started getting up very early to make time for running.  She is not obligated or forced to, but she wants to.

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What is behind all this school spirit?

When I first arrived at the University of Maryland, and for many weeks after, I was bemused by the number of students who walked around dressed from head to toe in clothing with our university’s name on it, and by the volume of merchandise in the university bookstore that features our mascot, Testudo the terrapin.

The weeks went by, and every day you could guarantee that at least 50% of the students on campus would be wearing at least one garment of University of Maryland attire. It wasn’t just the students – I saw their parents sporting large ‘M’ bumper stickers on their cars, and even younger siblings wearing Maryland red.

The university that you choose to attend in England is something to be proud of – most of us worked hard to get there and try to make the most of the experience – but at the end of the day it is just a university: a place to earn a degree, to meet friends, and to introduce you to another way of life.

Here in College Park, going to the University of Maryland is not merely an academic or a social choice – it is a way of life.

I remember one of the first orientation seminars I had when I arrived in Maryland, during which they played us a video showing a sea of red-clad students singing along to the Maryland victory song. They didn’t seem at all reserved or self-conscious to be professing so publicly their love for their educational institution.

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The third in a series looking at U.S. life and culture through its idioms.  View previous entries.

To buckle up = to put on a seat belt

Because I teach English as a Foreign Language, and I’ve been constantly improving my language skills for over 20 years, I have always been pretty confident about my English.  But guess what? When I arrived in Pennsylvania I quickly found that my English classes back home had left me unprepared for certain tasks – like driving.

On my very first day, someone from the university had picked me and my roommates up at the airport and was driving us to Selinsgrove when I saw a big sign on the road that said “Buckle up! It’s the law.” I had no idea what buckle up was, so I asked the person who was giving us a ride. She explained it meant to fasten your seat belt.

Since then, I have found the slogan “buckle up for the next million miles” in many spots along the roads of Pennsylvania.

This was the first of many encounters with traffic signals, road signs, GPS devices, safe-driving exams and many others, all of which have proved that no matter how much I’ve studied the language, there are certain things I could never learn without living in the culture.

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The sharp scent of red spices and curry powder. Heat emanating from the fresh pieces of naan bread. The sound of silverware clattering against each other. And the sight of native, desi food. I suddenly felt that a piece of me that had been empty for months was alive again.

I was in New York, where I had traveled for fall break in search of a taste of home.  I wanted to see all the famous sights of New York City of course, but I was most excited to visit the neighborhood of Jackson Heights. I had been told it was the hub for South Asian food and attire; a treat for all natives who want to seek home away from home.

South Asia is known for its spicy, fiery food and wide variety of dishes. From the day we are born, we adore food. Memories, events and photo albums are incomplete without remembering the food and if anyone ever says they don’t like food – well, they are pariahs from that day on (trust me, I have tried it).

Thus, when I came to America, it was hard for me to adjust to the bland, mild taste of pastas, pizzas and sandwiches. Every now and then, my taste buds started demanding a respite from the constant taste of cheese, tuna, lettuce and carrots, craving the more spicy chicken, beef, curry and green chilies. But until now, I had been unable to fulfill their wishes.

Gyro stand we found in Times Square

Other South Asian students who live in mainstream places like D.C., Chicago or California might think I’m crazy for going all the way to New York just for a taste of spicy curry, but that’s because they probably have places like that near where they live.  George Mason University in Virginia has traditional desi food available in the cafeteria every single day.  Even New Yorkers don’t have to travel to Jackson Heights for food – the streets in Times Square are lined with carts selling chicken gyro (a Greek dish popular among South Asians because of its spices).

However, Mount Holyoke College is in tiny, remote South Hadley, Massachusetts.  There it is impossible to satisfy such food cravings.

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