Culture Shock-ish


It was weird to see people skateboarding for the first time. It’s not like skateboarding as a concept was something that I was unfamiliar with. But the practice, the use of a skateboard to actually transport yourself from point A to point B was something that I only ever fully observed when I started University in the US. I couldn’t help but smile whenever I saw guys gathered in a little nook practicing their flips and trees. My world of movies was becoming my world period.

I found myself saying ‘you’re good’ a lot. Someone hits you accidentally when passing by and they apologise, I say ‘you’re good’. It became both my ‘don’t worry about it’ and my ‘you’re welcome’. No one I know from home uses this phrase in this way, but somehow, once I landed in the US, it became a part of my vocabulary that I called on daily.

It was really interesting to see the way people experienced weather. See, I grew up and went to school in a pretty hot country. We complained a lot about it, but the heat was really all we knew. We got rain and we had colder seasons, if they could really even be considered cold, but the heat was constant. I haven’t really gone to school in a place with reliable weather since then, but I’ve found it so interesting to see how people feel so much more energetic with the sun and actively speak about their gloom with rain and clouds. For me, the weather doesn’t make much of a difference except in deciding what I wear. I learnt to love the rain and the cold as it was the only real reprieve from the heat. But that’s not the case here.… I guess you always end up appreciating what you have less of.

Snow completely fascinated me. These last few months weren’t the first time I experienced snow, but the snow felt realer somehow. It would fall in bigger chunks and I could hear it crunching against my boots. My hair would shrink as the snow melted on it and the breeze would make it hard to see. Snow isn’t something I’d ever expect to see in my neck of Nigeria… and it’s something I got to experience quite a bit of these last couple months.

Things are more informal. I say hi to my teachers and to staff. And the age divides between different years aren’t as crazy as they were in high school. Granted, I don’t think many high schools were as extreme as mine in terms of how separate you could be from someone just a year above or below you and I think that separation really messed with my mind for the longest time. It’s been interesting learning to navigate relationships with professors that feel both more informal and more professional and to try to break out of the mentality that my friendship group has to be limited to people in my year. I mean, I’d definitely love to have some friends from there, but I’m trying to be less subconsciously opposed to friendships with people older and younger than me. Plus, I’m trying to curb my tendency towards social awkwardness. That one’s been a tall task.

Keeping up with friends has been tough, but somehow also less difficult than it was the last two years. I have more friends to keep up with now from different schools and I think one of the toughest things for me is going from talking to people everyday to talking maybe once every two weeks. And that isn’t necessarily bad (I mean, we all have crazy schedules), but a lot of the time, during those fortnightly catch up sessions, I feel like I’m only catching a glimpse into these peoples lives. And you know, people are completely entitled to decided which parts of their lives they share with people, but it’s weird. You can go from being as thick as thieves to struggling to keep a conversation going. That’s the hardest thing about long distance to me. It takes work… and that work needs to be reciprocal.

These are just a couple of things that struck me as different and cool during my first semester of college. I think I'm also weirdly aware of just how little time I have left in college - only 7 more semesters. It was hard... really hard if I'm being honest, but I think now that I'm a bit further away from it, I can say that it was actually really amazing and I hope to make the most of the remaining time I have there.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and is ramping up some sleep miles ahead of the new year.

God bless,

Dera

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