Transforming a turbulent start into smooth sailing

20 September 2023
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For some people who go abroad, the first days and weeks can be difficult—but that doesn't have to define the experience. 2022–23 FLTAs Eva Scheicher and Winfried Stangl talk about their initial turbulence in the US that ultimately transformed into unforgettable Fulbright experiences.

Eva Scheicher

2022–23 Austrian foreign language teaching assistant
Lafayette College, Pennsylvania

You think it won’t happen to you. And that’s a good thing, because if you were afraid of every single little thing that could happen, you wouldn’t dare do anything, right?

But oh my, culture shock did happen to me. I didn’t think it would, but it came for me, hard. I was completely unprepared. Of course I had heard about it, of course all the pre-departure orientations and events had touched upon that topic, but I thought, “Well, how bad could it be? How foreign could a country be, whose language I speak fluently and whose culture and media I have been consuming ever since I started consuming culture and media in general?” I have watched American movies and TV shows, listened to American music, read American books, followed American politics ever since I remember watching movies and TV, listening to music, reading books, and following politics! I thought I knew enough, was familiar with the culture enough, to not struggle with culture shock. 

The problem is: studying a culture and actually living in it are two completely different things. Representations of a culture are just that: representations. They are not the real thing, and so I found myself struggling with differences that I had never even expected. I especially struggled with US feedback culture. Americans are so horribly nice, even if you do a bad job, which is definitively not something that can be said of Austrian feedback culture. If you do a bad job in Austria, people will let you know unmistakably. One would think that people giving nice feedback was a good thing, but it led to me not being able to trust myself anymore. Were people nice because I was doing a good job, or were they nice even though I was doing a bad job? Was I doing a good job?

What I also didn’t anticipate was that culture shock is not necessarily what you think it is. For me, it was not so much that you cannot handle the differences, it was just the mental exhaustion of having to handle them all the time. Can I figure out how a doorknob works? Yes, of course. Am I able to operate this foreign kind of window? Naturally. But it takes some time, even if it’s just a few minutes. There is no break, there is no autopilot, every single situation has to be evaluated from a completely new perspective. At home, you are not that aware of how much implicit culture-related knowledge you carry with you that you then suddenly lack. And it is at times very at odds with how you normally assess your own everyday competencies. Who doesn’t know how to open a window? You constantly have to teach yourself everyday routines.

For me, [culture shock] was not so much that you cannot handle the differences, it was just the mental exhaustion of having to handle them all the time.

Another thing I struggled with was social interactions in general. As an FLTA, you’re teaching classes but also taking classes. Sometimes you’re a teacher, sometimes you’re a student. This is a position that comes with special challenges, but also special chances. It can be limiting, but it can also be freeing. In the first months, I felt like I was neither student nor teacher, not a part of any group, which made finding friends hard. But at some point I realized that this was the wrong way to think about it. I wasn’t neither student nor teacher, I was both student and teacher. And this mindset made all the difference. It wasn’t that I belonged nowhere, it was that I belonged everywhere.

There was one special event that made me realize that I could belong: I asked for help. I never considered myself a very indirect person, and by Austrian standards, I am indeed very direct. But by American standards, I am not. My colleagues were the most welcoming, friendly people I have ever met, and they made my workplace the best I have ever had. And they were incredibly helpful—but the problem was that I didn't ask for help at first! I thought I was asking, and I thought I was being left alone to fend for myself, but I was, in fact, not asking for help. In Vienna, when I need help with something, I tell my friends and my family of my struggles, and they will offer me their assistance. But that's a very indirect way of asking for help; objectively, it's just a statement with the implicit expectation that I will be offered help. I did the same thing in the US, and I wasn't offered help because I didn't explicitly ask for it. But once I very explicitly asked for help and got it right away, and that's when it clicked for me: I wasn't being left alone. I just hadn't communicated my needs successfully.

But I also realized that I didn’t have to assimilate, just to adapt. I could also share my culture, and so when I had colleagues tell me of their struggles, I did the Austrian thing and offered help even without being asked for it. I brought a Red Bull for my colleague who had to finish an article, a pack of Mannerschnitten for another who didn’t have time to get lunch before class. And I offered to take over conversation hours. I didn’t have to let go of my own little cultural quirks, I just had to realize that I shouldn’t implicitly expect them or expect to be understood immediately.

Accepting to be misunderstood and to misunderstand was freeing. A misunderstanding is not the end of the world; on the contrary, it is an opportunity to communicate again, to get to know others the way they see themselves and how they really are, instead of relying on preconceptions. And cultural differences can actually be kind of liberating—you can always get a pass for being socially awkward by blaming it on culture!

A misunderstanding is not the end of the world; on the contrary, it is an opportunity to communicate again.

My year as an FLTA was invaluable for me as a person and completely changed the way I see the world. I think my experience of having to decide if I was a teacher or student and deciding to be both was symbolic for my experience as an FLTA as a whole. I now know that it doesn’t matter where I go, I actually do not have to fit in perfectly to belong. I just have to decide to try. 

Winfried Stangl

2022–23 Austrian foreign language teaching assistant
Dartmouth College, New Hampshire

As someone who had never been to the US before, I already expected to find it difficult adapting to different aspects of daily life on campus. What I had thought would be particularly challenging were things like getting accustomed to the food or speaking English almost all of the time. What ended up being my biggest challenge, however, was the campus culture—or,  more precisely, the working mindset displayed by both instructors and students.

Having studied in Innsbruck on a university campus surrounded by a vast alpine landscape, I was used to people maintaining a good work-life balance. This meant that students were spending as much time on pursuing various past-time activities as they were on doing work for their studies. Not that they were not taking their academic work seriously; no, they merely cared about the world outside of the university as well. What I quickly realized after arriving at the Dartmouth College campus was that for many of the students, there was no “outside of  academic life.” A prime example for that were the varsity athletes who got up at 6 a.m. for early morning practice and went to bed at 1 a.m., their only rest day on Sunday. Their seventeen-hour day was filled with classes, homework, labs, and gatherings of students’ social bodies. Sure, the college also had its fair share of party students who skipped classes to sleep off a hangover, but those were definitely not the majority.

As tuition for the school was very expensive, students tried to get the most out of their college experience. Consequently, there was little to no time planned for resting during the term. When I asked different students how much time they had to unwind and relax and how many hours they slept on average, the standard responses were “none” and “five.” It was then that I understood students were not trying to progress through the term whilst maintaining a healthy lifestyle; instead, they were simply trying to make it to the end of the term. Rest was a privilege for between the terms, not during the terms. Hence, by the time finals were around the corner, students were fatigued and barely functioning anymore. The students were not the only ones living like this, however, because the professors were equally invested in their academic work and were thus kept remarkably busy.

It was then that I understood students were not trying to progress through the term whilst maintaining a healthy lifestyle; instead, they were simply trying to make it to the end of the term.

Apart from their academic work, the campus held something else in store for students, something that I found quite unusual: a prospering Greek life. While many colleges and universities throughout the country have banned all fraternities and sororities from their campuses, this particular campus is basically built around them. At Dartmouth, over 60% of the student body is estimated to be involved in Greek life. The reason for that is the remote location of the campus, where students looking to party (particularly the underaged ones) cannot go and hit up the local bars because the three bars there have adopted a very strict ID policy. The fraternity basements are therefore the only places where virtually everyone can drink and party to their hearts’ delight. If it were not for those social institutions, the students would not have anywhere to go for those integral college-life experiences. Besides, an eager participation in Greek life is essential for anyone interested in networking and trying to secure a position or internship at a distinguished finance firm. Due to fear of missing out on the social events, many students dreaded not being part of a fraternity or sorority, and thus they completed whatever task they were given as part of an application or initiation process. Students who were going through various rites of passage told me stories that were quite alarming, and I could not grasp why students did not boycott the fraternities and sororities if they were given nauseating tasks. For some, it seems, making the cut and joining Greek life creates more career paths than getting straight As. 

In the wake of observing both of the aspects mentioned, the academic stress and the social life on campus, I felt a kind of stress flare up in me like I had never experienced it before. I was becoming one of them—always busy, constantly checking or writing emails, not going to sleep before 3 a.m. or sometimes even later. Being exposed to this lifestyle had started to draw me in as well. Like so many others, I started to focus on one thing only: making it to the end of the term. After a while, however, I started to meet people while I was in the climbing gym. People who were less interested in getting an internship at a finance or consultant firm, who cared more about spending time in the great outdoors and leading a more sustainable lifestyle. Those people in turn introduced me to other likeminded individuals, and soon after I became an unofficial honorary member of the mountaineering club. As time went on, I got to know more student societies or just individuals whose sole purpose was not only to be productive in the academic sense in order to work towards a bright and luxurious future, but to perhaps also give in to needs of self-preservation every now and then and take things more slowly.

As time went on, I got to know more student societies or just individuals whose sole purpose was not only to be productive in the academic sense.

I am aware that this piece of writing could be considered a criticism of a high-performing academic culture, but that is not the point I am trying to make here. What I meant to do was illustrate the main cultural differences that I was grappling with during my first few months in the US. The academic environment over there can be quite competitive and demanding at times, which might be unusual for Austrians. What it did was add stress to an already stressful first term in a foreign country. While this part of the culture was very stressful, another side of the culture was the driving force behind remedying that. The greatest resource the campus has to offer are probably the people, who are welcoming, friendly, and engaging. Being overwhelmed by a feeling of second-hand stress coming from specific people, I had to extend my social circles. Sometimes, one has to take a careful step outside of one’s comfort zone in order to find the people who are the right crowd. Those are the people who have the power to help you make the most of your stay in the US and transform it into the truly magnificent time that it can and should be.