A few months before I left Ireland, I was looking at a certain US college's website, clicking around aimlessly and trying to imagine myself as a student there. I didn't end up applying to this particular college, but the memory of its website has stayed with me because of one particular section that I found absolutely hilarious. Billing itself as a guide for international students on what to expect upon coming to America for the first time, the site warned prospective internationals that "In America, people usually bathe every day" and "When an American says to you 'See you later', they do not usually have a designated time in mind". I showed this to my sister and we had a good laugh. What naifs they expect us to be, I giggled, secure in my knowledge that although American is technically a foreign country, it's not really a foreign country.
Oh, how wrong I was.
I can't pinpoint the exact second of realisation, my "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more" moment (the red squiggly line that has just appeared under my chosen spelling of "realisation" is one of many, though). It could've been when I started to cross the road, unaware that I was walking right into the path of an oncoming UPS truck, because I had checked for traffic in the wrong direction. It could've been when I asked somebody if we were supposed to meet up at half five, only to be met with an uncomprehending stare until I tentatively amended it to "Oops, I mean...five thirty?". It could've been the eternity I spent staring at the shelves of peanut butter in the supermarket, trying to figure out which brand I'd like. Sophie never had such a torturous choice!
It's true that the West is fairly homogenized. When I walk through downtown Boston, many of the clothes shops and fast food outlets are familiar to me from Grafton st.; drunk college students here sing along to the choruses of the same songs as drunk college students at home; the drinking games are mostly the same, with slight deviations. The 'Poster Sale' that sets up camp for a few days on campus seems to be an universal thing. Yet there are innumerable tiny differences that make every outing, every purchase, every meal and every conversation just that little bit disorientating
To stand at the counter of a Dunkin' Donuts, peering desperately at the coins in your palm, trying to figure which ones are dimes and which are quarters, is an exercise in appearing simultaneously touchingly useless and incredibly irritating. I'm constantly apologising for my cluelessness, repeating myself, tempering my apparently incredibly Irish locutions so I'm understood.
It isn't the difference in vocabulary or currency or driving regulations (on a related note: ) that's the biggest culture shock though; it's people's attitudes. We're all aware of the cliche of insistent friendliness on the part of waiters, checkout girls and bus drivers, but nobody prepared me for the attitude of the students. In a nutshell, students actually study. Bizarre!
The workload is roughly the same as it is back home, the level of difficulty no higher than I'm used to, but it seems like more work because all of it is required. Here, everyone goes to all their classes, having already done the required reading, and - get this - actually contributes. There's none of the typical Irish reticence about speaking up in class; here, students don't only answer the teacher's questions, they formulate questions of their own. The student who sleeps in instead of attending class, who merely skims the reading, who sits at the back of the room and doesn't raise her hand - she is an anomaly rather than the norm. My To Be Read pile is stacking up beside my bed, while at home I'd be inclined to leave it to catch up during the midterm, here I'm trying my best to stay on top of the game. A system of continual assessment rather than everything riding on one big examination or essay at the end of the semester is tiring at the outset, but less daunting in the long run. It might sound like an overwhelming shift, but it's really do-able; everyone else in the college seems to be taking the work seriously, so it's easy to go along with it and take the work seriously yourself.
Don't worry; it's not all disorientation and frenetic studying. I've been on a boat cruise of Boston harbour, visited Harvard, seen Janelle Monae live in concert (with tickets for LCD Soundsystem this Tuesday!), and explored downtown Boston. I've played frisbee on Boston Common and cultivated a friendly relationship with the employees at our local Dunkin' Donuts. I've spent an evening at the Museum of Fine Arts, wandering around with hundreds of other students, ending up sprawled out on the grass in front of the museum, listening to the DJ inside blast Rihanna and Biggie Smalls and gazing up at the stars - as wonderfully surreal as that sounds. Oh, and you know those red plastic drinking cups we've seen in movies? They're oh-so-real. People are ridiculously friendly; any qualms about the difficulties of making new friends were instantly brushed aside.
My only complaint so far: a bone to pick with RTE - why isn't Fair City available on your iPlayer?!
