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by Mark
1-26-07
I often wonder how students from other countries view Auburn when they first arrive to campus. Is there much of a culture shock? Is Auburn a good sample of how the rest of America operates?
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For a short time a couple years ago, I became involved with a church program that helped Chinese students better read in English. When I met the guy I’d be helping, he had only been in the country about a month. I asked him how he chose to come to Auburn. He told me something like “It was on top of the list”. Initially, I thought he meant Auburn was ranked as a top school for the graduate degree he was pursuing. After talking with him a little longer, I learned that he actually meant Auburn was one of the first universities listed in alphabetical order on a list of schools offering the graduate degree. Auburn only needed to beat out the colleges which started with an A - E. He told me that the university he attended in China sent him to America to research America’s college system. I would imagine this to be an interesting job to have – wondered what some of his reports looked like. Here’s what I’d imagine one to be. |
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“The people are nice. I’ve yet to see a tiger in the ‘home of the tigers’ and at random times, day or night, a large number of men and women of all ages will amass downtown wearing orange to throw what looks to be toilet paper into the trees. People greet me by saying war eagle. Some sort of refugee camp occupies much of North Donahue during many weekends in the fall, and they simply disappear the following Monday. This place is weird.”
However, assuming a huge culture shock for foreign students isn’t very fair. One of my electrical engineering buddies recently graduated. We would have a couple classes together every semester and we would study together fairly often. He’s from Kenya and he’d tell me how he was tired of the dumb questions people in Auburn would ask him after they learned he was from Kenya. People would always him things like;
“So you
never had running water before you came here?”
“How did you live without any electricity?”
“Did you work on a farm?”
Two summers ago, he went to live in New York for an internship. When New Yorkers asked him where he was from, he’d tell them Alabama. Still, they’d usually respond with questions like;
“So you
never had running water before you came here?”
“How did you live without any electricity?”
“Did you work on a farm?”
Those are true
stories, embellished only slightly to read as cheesy Reader’s Digest
jokes.
WAR EAGLE!
E-mail mark at
mark@theauburner.com
