Now, I’m going to begin by saying that I define “foreign” very loosely for the purposes of this article. I’m talking about origin stories. I’m talking about regional differences. I’m talking about international differences.
I have had the very interesting pleasure of being a student from a region that is very different from Trinity and also veering very close to an international student. (Yes, we’re getting all sorts of personal here.) So my perspective is one where I am a Korea-born, California-raised student in the Northeast. None of those are very similar to each other. I’m not saying that I haven’t adjusted, I’m just saying that transition and adaptation have always been a necessity in my life.
I’m not going to say that I’ve suffered or that it's been super smooth sailing; to be perfectly frank, I was lucky enough to have it rather average. It was difficult adapting, but I’d always been good at being outgoing enough to quickly make friends. However, no matter how much you adapt, it is often the case that you’ll never find someone who understands you.
It’s not that you friends don’t try, or that they’re insensitive, or that you haven’t tried to explain it. It’s just that when you begin you’re both too busy just trying to forge the relationship of friendship. Following that, you try to maintain that status quo between you two so that the friendship solidifies. Once you’re at the stage of explaining, sometimes it’s already too hard to bring it up or there’s just too big a rift between their understanding of you and perhaps the reality of you. To take it further, a lot of times, the differences aren’t things that you can put into words. There’s just an itch at the back of your neck or slight shake in your hands; you can never quite pinpoint the difference but you know that it makes you slightly uncomfortable.
And I could complain about the differences but there’s a bigger point in the works.
I never wanted complete assimilation. I pick up accents and mannerisms and other such things but there’s always a part me of that’s from back then or back there or back home. For all that I’ve changed or grown or adapted, I know there’s always a part of me that’ll remember Korea. Remember California. Remember my five-year-old trip on the plane to some grand new adventure.
It’s not a bad thing to remember the differences. It’s not a bad thing to be different. Sometimes it can be jarring and sometimes it can be soothing to remember that a part of your home will always be with you. (Including the mannerisms of your parents that you swore you would never pick up, but inevitably picked up.)
I remember being terrified of changing as a person and growing past the idea of me that was back home. But growth and change are not always a bad thing and it does not always mean you lose that bit of yourself.
So grow! So change! So go forth and conquer the world!
