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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: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Saturday October 18 2014, @02:44PM
Dude is a little confused about our classless society WRT services and products.
We all have a common consumption level not at all common incomes etc. Saying some shouldn't consume as much as others, is seen Exactly the same as racism for commercial mass media advertising sales reasons. It would be like suggesting we go back to segregated schools or water fountains, from a social faux pas attitude.
As an example, I'm sitting on my $1200 couch last night relaxing after a week at the $120K/yr job reading an article linked to from HN at some SJW website in absolute intestine writhing agony about an anecdote were a dude bought a $1350 couch for his trailer to relax in at the end of the day paid by his $25K/yr job and the SJW article was a couple pages of propaganda about the injustice that the loan shark he rented the couch from actually un-american-ly demanded his rental payment, how dare he, It was pretty freaky. But if you model it as we're all supposed to have a common and equal consumption level (from each according to their ability and to each according to their need) then it all makes sense. We're "supposed to" spend money at a roughly $75K/yr income level. Of course the median is like $40K whoops. For me its pretty easy to consume at the standard level, for the truck driver dude in the SJW story at $25K its really hard to consume at the standard level.
So we've got a 95th percentile job where I live or 90th percentile job nationwide, sitting in a 50th percentile brand new couch, more or less, but the dude in the story has about 20th percentile household income and he's trying to buy (rent, really) the same 50th percentile couch (and yeah I did check the numbers and 1 in 5 american families DO make less than $25K/yr). I didn't check and see if a bit over $1K is a median couch but from a casual observation at the furniture store when we bought it, it sounds about right plus or minus exotic leather upholstery (eww) or maybe immense size costing more for an obese mcmansion.
This is what's confusing the Indian dude. He sees "married with children" and thinks the lifestyle on the stage is an accurate reflection of a retail store clerks lifestyle. The humor might be similar, but the dudes rented room isn't going to look anything like the amazing house stage on the show.
I work in a building with 800 people (probably more) and there's a call center that I know only pays $8/hr and I make about the same pay per hour as they pull per day, but they "all" have new iphones that cost twice what I paid for my Android phone, and have rims and stereos in their car that must cost about as much as my cheap new commuter car. Oh and none of the poor people would be seen dead in shoes that cost any less than twice my cheap-ish sneakers, and I buy kinda nice shoes because I hike a lot at lunch hour etc, I'm talking about $8/hr people buying $300 sneakers made in China for $1/pair. Poor people priorities for spending money are invariably really weird compared to wealthier people attitudes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 18 2014, @05:53PM
> Poor people priorities for spending money are invariably really weird compared to wealthier people attitudes.
A curious person would try to figure out why that is. A self-involved person would decide that its because they are stupid.