After studying abroad, I still believe, as I did before, that identity will influence the way you see the world. I think that I even might believe even more than I did before that it influences your perception and the way you embrace another culture. There were many kids in my program that would always say “this doesn’t happen in America” or “if we were in America, we wouldn’t have to deal with this”. I personally didn’t ever think this or say this because I wanted and understood that this culture was obviously different, and I didn’t want it to be like America because it had its own strength.
Many people just see America as the best country in the world, but I think leaving and seeing a new culture really made me aware of the weaknesses that we have in America but also the strengths. What I see as strengths and weaknesses might differ because of my identity. I am very open minded and accepting of people, so I personally found the way many of countries I visited treated refugees to be horrible. I was able to learn about it and see how other countries around the world treat refugees and compare that to how we treat refugees in America. I also am someone who is very adaptable, so the new situations I was thrown into were fun to experience. Others who may be more use to a schedule, the things they know, and predictably may have really struggled to get use to their new life in Italy. In Italy things are never on time, people are always very close to you, the items in the grocery store change weekly, and so many other little things that make the days a little more complicated. I embraced these and took it in because it’s part of their life, but it really frustrated other people and mad them upset when things didn’t run properly like they would in America.
Your identity does influence the way you see the world. It makes to pick up certain parts of the culture more than others, I liked to listen and learn about the politics because that’s something I’m interested in, but others may have looked more closely at other parts of the culture depending on their interests. We all interact with people based off of the identity we have and the way we perceive and expect things out of people. Even if we all might have our own identities, I think there are somethings all people will grow to appreciate when they study abroad and will miss once they return home.
