I have experienced a number of cultural shocks in my year and a half at Duke thus far. When I initially arrived, I believed I was well-equipped to integrate myself into the community due to my American background and family. However, what I failed to realise, was that even though my parents had American accents, I had grown up in a completely different world. I had no friends my own age upon arriving in the US; hence, I was not prepared for the cultural shifts and norms that awaited me. When pondering upon this prompt, many such examples came to mind. One instance in particular illustrates the extent to which I was ill exposed to American teenage and university culture.

My freshman dorm was populated with many people with the same names. Obviously, this proved difficult for people trying to get to know large numbers of new people, with no clue who each was referring to, without the added problem of having new friends with the same names. When attempting to direct a friend to one person with the name X, I referenced a racial descriptor commonly used in England. Upon using said description, my friend told me this was inappropriate in American culture, implying that I was being racially insensitive. I was immediately taken aback, as of course that was the last thing I was trying to be. To me, this was a normal way to refer to a person, as was the case in the environment in which I had been brought up. In fact, a few weeks later, my friend from home from the same race as X used the same descriptor in a social media caption to refer to him and his friends. Days later, there was another reference to the same descriptive word in another home friend’s social media. I pointed these both out to the original American friend, explicitly demonstrating that this was deemed appropriate in England, and that I had not been aware of the taboo nature of the term in the US. She understood where I was coming from following the examples, and I’m sure she has long forgotten the situation. For me, however, it has remained somewhat prominent in my recollections as I think about the many differences between living in the two countries.

It is very easy to evaluate others based on your own moral and social standpoint. Such social norms have been embedded into us through growing up in our respective societies. What I have learned is that we should attempt to understand why it is other people act the way they do before judging them. They are also a product of their communities. It is not fair to immediately call somebody out negatively without first taking into account why it is they are acting in the way they are. Perhaps we too are acting in an inappropriate manner along the lines of their cultural upbringings. If more people understood the importance of this, perhaps we would have more respect for and harmony between other cultures.