My Life as an Immigrant- Trying to Fit In
And the importance of cultural frames of reference
This is the third part of a series of posts where I look back on my experience as an immigrant.
In my introduction to the topic, which you can find here, I wrote about my brief trips to Germany and Spain as a language student, recounted an unpleasant and traumatic experience I had in Barcelona, and reflected on the idea of “privilege” through the perspective of someone who experiences the world as an immigrant, while in my second post, I talked about my first time in the United States.
This time, I take up my narrative from where I left off and reflect a little bit on the importance of cultural frames of reference.
So without further ado, here is this week’s newsletter.
Looking back at what I wrote two weeks ago, I realized I may have been a little bit harsher than I intended towards Charlottesville and the University of Virginia campus. The truth is, once I got over my first impression, which, admittedly, has taken me a couple of months, I actually really enjoyed being a student there. Although tiny compared to the standards I was used to (let’s face it, I was coming from a city of 15 million people), both the city and the campus were actually very beautiful and, I realize now, looking back almost 20 years later, were ideal for a 19-year-old who came to the United States to study.
The campus itself was small, or maybe I should say compact, and very green, which I loved. Pretty much everything was within walking distance. The central part of the campus was known as “the Grounds” and it was originally designed by Thomas Jefferson, with the most important features being the Rotunda and “the Lawn.” I used to be impressed by the fact that I was actually attending a university founded and designed by the third president of the United States. I’m sure it was (and maybe still is) a selling point for the university, too. It clearly worked for me at the time. Until, that is, I did a bit of reading on early American history years later and got to know about Jefferson from more critical sources. But that is a story for another day.
As first-year students, we were housed in two dorms known, not too imaginatively, as “Old” and “New” Dorms. My friend and I were assigned a room in the latter. The buildings were divided into separate apartments, and ours had three other rooms in it, with two people living in each one. All except one of our flatmates (if you will) were coming from different parts of the state of Virginia. I mention this because, looking back, I realize that it added to the framework within which we formed our relationships.
Here is what I mean: My friend and I were already different from our flatmates since we were coming from a country 10,000 km away, spoke a different language, and had a completely different set of cultural reference points. To this almost “natural” or “given” set of differences was added the fact that, while we were coming from a very cosmopolitan city, our flatmates mainly had rural backgrounds. I don’t want to come across as arrogant here or imply that one is better than the other. I underline this because, even though I didn’t fully recognize it back then, I now realize that it must also have added to the divide that existed between “us” and “them.”
And here is where I want to get back to the importance of reference points to establish a relationship framework, where I may have benefited from being exposed to American culture before actually coming to the U.S. to study. In addition to previously studying at an American high school in Turkey and the books I read there, which I have written in this newsletter before and which you can find here, I credit the TV show Friends, of which I was an ardent fan back then (and still am, to be honest) for giving me an idea of what Americans or American culture may have been like.
Of course, we can debate how much of “American culture” the show really represented, but I guess it is safe to say that it gave me something to work with. I am not simply talking about the plot or the themes that were covered in the show, but expressions, idioms, a particular sense of humor, etc. that I absorbed while watching it. It somehow made it easier for me to connect, understand, and communicate with my American friends.
My other frame of reference was rap music. Around 2002, when I was in high school, I started listening to Eminem, and I was hooked. I bought all his cassettes (remember those?) and was constantly listening to them, whether at home or outside on my Walkman (yes, the good old days). Through Eminem, I also discovered other rappers like 2Pac and Biggie, so when I got to the U.S., my ardent devotion to rap (to put it mildly) became a common topic of interest with some of my flatmates, who introduced me to different artists. Back then, rap was not as big of a global phenomenon as it is today, so I could see that my friends were slightly bemused by my passion, but it also created another common ground between us and helped me to “fit in” more easily.
Because, at the end of the day, as a 19-year-old college student from Turkey who has just started to attend college in the United States, I felt like I needed to fit in.
This was not a fully conscious process. As I have written before in my very first post on this topic, I did not define myself consciously as an “immigrant” back then, with all the implications that that identity carries.
This does not mean, however, that I did not face some of the same emotional challenges that an immigrant would face. I had uprooted my life, leaving behind my family and friends, with whom I shared a common past, common background, common language, and common frames of reference, and moved to another country 10,000 km away. Not only that, but now I had to establish a new life, with a new social circle and a new support system, from scratch. And now, as I think about those days, I realize how important the frames of reference I had written about above were for me in my efforts to do so.
I think this is a good place to stop for now, although I will continue with my narrative later on. I especially want to talk about the social life on the campus, which mostly revolved around the “fraternity culture,” which, for us foreign students, was truly something “foreign” and new.
Until next time!
Hi Doga, this was interesting to ready. I think foreign students like the ones we once were, had the benefit of learning about American culture before we came to this country (although, I had to say, in my case, since the Internet didn't exist back then, there wasn't a whole lot except for TV shows dubbed in my local language, Cantonese). I'm curious about the frame of reference on the other side of your dorm--meaning, the dorm mates from rural Virginia. Did they know anything about Turkey? What was their reaction when they first met you? What kind of exchanges did you have?