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The Times of India has a story about what an Indian university student thought were the most surprising aspects of his experience studying in the US.
Aniruddh Chaturvedi came from Mumbai to Carnegie Melon University in Pittsburgh, Penn., where he is majoring in computer science. This past summer he interned at a tech company in Silicon Valley.
It's interesting reading, some of which you might expect, about economic differences, supermarkets, obesity, etc. made his list of surprising things.
But Americans in general seem to come across to Aniruddh somewhat better than we come across to ourselves:
- Nobody talks about grades here.
- Everyone is highly private about their accomplishments and failures.
- Far from being competitive, Students were highly collaborative
- Strong ethics — everyone has a lot of integrity
- Girls are not very promiscuous, contrary to most Hollywood films
- Almost every single American has access to basic food, clothing, water and sanitation.
- Emphasis on physical fitness/being outdoorsy
His observations were not filled with the anti-American observations that Americans have come to expect from visitors, or that many of us see in our daily lives. He is not totally unaware of some less negative aspects, discrimination, waste of food, money, and prices. But by and large these aspects did not seem a major part of his impressions.
One wonders whether his naïveté will get bruised and he will come to his senses as his studies progress, or if the US is actually nowhere near as bad as many of us think it is.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 17 2014, @09:54PM
Clearly he doesn't come to these sites for he would find America to be the wretched hive of scum and villainy as us self-appointed intellectuals and enlightened folk around here know it to be (like Mr. First Poster).
(Score: 3, Informative) by skullz on Friday October 17 2014, @10:01PM
WeeeEEEEEllllllll.... if you had actually READ the original content you would have seen that that a quote that Mr. Chaturvedi ended his article with:
Chaturvedi ended his post with a link to a video of "America F--- Yeah" from the movie "Team America."
In closing: Soylent 'Merica! Land of lack of reading the articles.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 17 2014, @10:31PM
Doesn't change my point, however. And ow, the mod burn. Here I was praising our collective self-importance and intellectualism over the lowly "sheeple", as those of us in the know like to say.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Adamsjas on Friday October 17 2014, @10:52PM
Not at all clear if the kid even understood that clip.
He might have thought it was a full on endorcement rather than parody.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 18 2014, @01:03AM
I'm thinking he really did take the clip at face value. I think that's a sign of his cultural naivete, even after being here for ~7 years. Which should modify how we see all of his other observations, the guy's understanding of the american society is still pretty superficial. But you can't blame him for that, I doubt that even 1 out of 10 soybeans knows what both Diwali and Eid are even though there isn't a single Indian who doesn't.
(Score: 2) by gman003 on Saturday October 18 2014, @03:47AM
Americans have an appreciation for "irony" (using the modern, nigh-meaningless definition). Many use that song as a patriotic anthem - in a self-deprecating-but-still-pro-american "yeah, America's pretty fucked up, but we're still #1 and can blow up anybody on the planet, nobody really wants us to be the world police but screw 'em, we're doing it anyway because those bad guys aren't gonna kill themselves" sort of way.