When you move away from home for college, you have to get used to a different lifestyle despite where you're from. Here are five different struggles Puerto Rican students go through when attending college anywhere in the States.
1. The food
Don't get me wrong, I like American food, but when you grow up with Puerto Rican food, you start to miss it after having too many french fries from your college cafeteria. If you want this type of food, at least where I go to college, you’d have to cook it yourself or you need to go to a restaurant that’s expensive, leaving you with a $40 bill for your plate alone. At home, you can find this type of food anywhere, and it’s nowhere near as expensive. You can cook it yourself, but it always tastes a million times better when your mom makes it for you. Thanks, Mom.
2. The cold weather
I’m sure you have heard us complain about this a million times when fall starts. I’d say the coldest it gets in PR is 70 degrees around February, meaning that anything below 55-60 degrees makes us uncomfortable if we don't have the right jacket. We definitely prefer 80-degree weather to this. Also, the cold wind chill is our worst enemy and that’s never going to change. My social media usually contains a bunch of posts complaining about the cold, especially around January or February when the temperature difference is huge and that’s just normal. I ended up getting used to the cold after a whole year, but that doesn’t mean I prefer winter to summer, because I don’t think anybody does.
And our friends back home always make fun of us for it.
Thanks, I know I’m freezing, no need to remind me of it.
3. The heat you have to deal with when you go back home for break.
Maybe I’m just speaking for myself on this one, but I’ve realized that every time I go home during Christmas break or especially during the summer, it is incredibly hard for me to get used to the heat again after spending months in relatively cold weather. You get off the plane and feel like you’re seriously melting because you still have your winter clothes on. Still, it’s relieving not having to wear a winter coat and boots all the time and I’m thankful I get to escape the cold weather for a while, unlike most people.
4. Stereotypical questions
These are questions we get all the time from anybody that finds out we're not from the U.S., like “Where did you learn English?” and most of the time they aren’t annoying, because we understand the curiosity and are perfectly fine with you asking. Some of these questions, though, are a bit out of place, like when somebody once asked me if I have to take a bus to get back home and they weren’t joking. It was an actual question. There’s also people that think it’s OK to make fun of you for not pronouncing a word exactly like it’s supposed to sound. The thing is, if we speak two or more languages when you speak one, you shouldn’t be making fun of us for pronouncing something incorrectly. If you correct us in a nice way, it’s OK and we’ll appreciate it.
5. The drinking age
Anybody that comes from a place with a drinking age that’s less than 21 like Spain, Paris or the Caribbean can relate to this one. Not every Puerto Rican you meet drinks, but to the ones that do, it's a big cultural change and I agree. This does not mean the ones that drink are alcoholics, because that’s not what it’s like at all. We can drink legally at home because the drinking age is 18, but here you can get in big trouble, and it takes a while to get used to that fact.
Moving from Puerto Rico to the U.S. for college is an adjustment, and even though you can get used to it, Puerto Rico will always be home.
