Study Abroad Essay

The following is my submission for Abroad View (some study abroad magazine whose information was sent around on the J-School listserv) that I finally got around to finishing/submitting. Any feedback/reflections would be greatly appreciated. (By the way, I'd like to mention that, unlike the majority of stuff written on here, this is actually to be taken seriously).




The Power of Stereotypes

One fleeting glance is all that is required to form an impression, rekindle an unconscious image perpetuated by a media unfamiliar and unfriendly, and cause the rest of the world to take one step back.

And behind those unwavering eyes sits the crucible of the mind, blending the essence of images we think varied, diverse in their characteristics. For them, we all look, act, and think the same: we are the purveyors of wealth and misfortune; we are the operators of novel technology, wielders of cameras to take pictures of what they consider the mundane and the great heaping monoliths we will call our own. And as the carousels spin, everything great will be forgotten, as effortless as it had been to take the initial photograph.

In their country, we are sanctioned to act without thought, without caution, without prudence. We vomit in their streets. We abuse their hospitality. We are the tourists.

The movies depict us as men, Hawaiian shirts on our backs, sunglasses and cowboy hats protecting pale faces from recognition; they depict us as women, aged well into forties, canvas shorts and tube tops, topped off with a visor, green and transparent.

If only they exaggerated. As a student who has studied abroad on two separate occasions, I have seen the men and women of our films and their respective stereotypes more times than I would care to admit. Prior to going abroad, I believed them to be myth, dreams dreamt by Hollywood executives to entertain. Now I know them to be reality.

Yet, the fact remains that the stereotypes are only one version (and typically a minority) of a vast population of world travelers. Why then is it that the rest of us suffer the unkind effects (the glaring eyes, the countless entreaties of the street vendors that peddle pirated goods of every nature) of the one segment who has erred in their ignorance?

Because one image can change the world. Though the native people may see a thousand decent tourists, once they see the one that spits upon their land and their culture, that throws money about as if it were sand, that is all they see.

While studying in Mexico, I traveled with three girls and a guy. Two of the girls had blonde hair – one bleached, the other natural – and no matter where we went, no matter the time of day, those two girls received countless whistles and catcalls, flypaper for the spewing hormones and testosterone.

When I asked my host brother about the reasons behind this phenomenon, he said that when people in his country see American girls on TV at Spring Break, wild, uninhibited, and imbibed with amounts of alcohol that would kill the normal person, an image is formed. And from that moment on, they think that all girls from America are “easy.”

Mirthful and boorish, the tourists are among the easiest to pick out of a crowd, like discerning black from white; but for those of us who would like to blend in and find refuge abroad, all hopes are obliterated when we arrive, and all attempts to assimilate remain fruitless.

But now the question becomes, why is this stereotype continuously perpetuated? How is it possible that despite all the negative images projected onto tourists, they continue to act in a fashion that ensures the cultivation of a sentiment (culture) of hate and ignorance that will only do harm to both themselves and others?

Is it from the excitement that takes hold in the first steps from the plane? Perhaps an excitement that goes hand-in-hand with the idea of beholding that which the neighbors can only hope to see in dreams?

No, the ignorance that afflicts us stems from another font. It pervades the river of our collective consciousness, a plague, and we can only look on as the infection spreads though the body.

Our ignorance finds its origins in the desire to know something more. The tourists desire experience; temporary stays and an eagerness to pile the experience that only years can bring into the span of a few short days.

And though the intentions to know something more may be decent, the manner in which they are executed is faulted, bringing forth the resulting stereotypes and abuse.


The Desire to Blend

The line between the student and the tourist is often slight, as students often take the study abroad period for granted, incorrectly assuming that they are not there to learn and be educated, but to run wild where no one will ever remember their face or name; solely their actions make a print upon the eyes of the native.

But for most of us who have tried to blend in with the places we stay, there are other problems that we must face: the realization that one doesn’t simply have an identity in the place they stay, but a label as a tourist.

The recognition that one is thought merely as a foreigner is one of the worst realizations that can echo through the mind of an individual who desires acceptance. To be exhibited as an outsider, someone passing through with no right to be present: that is the fear of all who seek admission to a place not originally their own.

One instance in particular of such an experience comes to mind. When staying over for a few days in Madrid, a fellow American student and I went out with some friends to a nightclub. We were each dressed in a similar fashion, hardly any radical distinction could be made between persons in the group with the exception that the American and I were both a bit taller than the Spanish. At the door, each person in line was asked for his or her “billete” (or “ticket”). Yet, when the American student with me made it to the bouncer, he was asked for his “ticket,” and I for my “billete.”

For the next few days, that was all that he could talk about, that the bouncer had assumed (correctly) that he was a foreigner, an outsider, without the slightest bit of prompting. Although this might seem rather inconsequential to the outside observer, to the student, it is nothing short of devastating.

There goes along with being a study abroad student the desire to be one with the culture, to be outside the population of the tourists who stand before monuments and snap photos to send to the folks back home.

Although we may act and dress as the rest of the population, we are often singled out and our identity discovered and the façade unmasked.

The Student v. The Tourist

At times, the student begins to hate the “tourist.” He begins to think of himself as an entity outside of a population that he belongs to.

What is needed in every case is no doubt the need for acceptance on all accounts. Though it may be a lofty goal, impossible in the eyes of so many, it is entirely necessary.

But here comes a terribly precarious situation: to ostracize his or her own is easily accomplished, yet the fact that he or she must eventually return is disregarded and, upon reentry into their own country, there is a complete loss of cultural identity and the person becomes hollow. They despise their own and long for a return for that brief period when they were almost accepted by a culture outside of their own.

And here is the point that must be accepted without condition, without quarrel or rejection:

The student must accept the tourists, and accept that they too have the same right to be abroad as he himself. The foreigner must accept that there will always be people who have a desire to travel, that in doing so, peoples from other countries want to learn and not abuse. And the tourist must accept that there are standards different from their own, and that they are guests and so must act as such.