On Culture Shock

”You don’t slice your own cheese in America, do you?”

“Not really, it comes pre-sliced but sometimes you can buy a block but it’s not common”

“Ahh, very different cultures then”

I write this post as an American, on a computer manufactured somewhere in Asia, living in Sweden, drinking Italian coffee out of a mug from Norway. There’s no question that we live in a globalized society, so culture shock shouldn’t be as prevalent as it was previously. But it is, it exists and pretending that it doesn’t is being plain ignorant.

It’s more than a different language or pre-sliced vs. block cheese (block cheese is 1000x better), it’s something larger than those, the shock is based on a difference in way of life that creates culture shock. I didn’t know how much culture shock would affect me coming into Sweden but looking back over the past month and half, I can acknowledge that it has. Similarly, I know that I’ll experience reverse culture shock when I come back to the US in three months. 

In the past three years, I’ve lived in four different states, two continents, and four time zones. I’ve spent my fair share of time driving and in planes to get to my next destination and after everything I’ve experienced, you’d think I would be prepared for culture shock. But I wasn’t.

Everyone always asks me what the US “is like”. And I never know how to respond. What do they want to hear? What do I need to explain? Why is everyone asking about guns, Donald Trump, and prom? Why do I feel like I’m constantly getting judged for being American? 

Yes, I’m from the land of democracy, a weird election system, gun control or lack thereof, and millions of cars. But there’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t run around waving an American flag, carrying a rifle, and singing the national anthem or America the Beautiful but it doesn’t mean that I’m not an American. I skipped prom twice, disagree with pretty much everything that Donald Trump says, can’t sit through a baseball game, hate fried chicken, and advocate for stronger gun control. The American stereotype doesn’t perfectly fit me or anyone. It’s the individualism that creates its own stereotype.

Far from that, it’s everyone’s individualism that creates culture shock. You’d expect the norms of one country to be similar but in reality the norms are different. Maybe globalization has changed the Swedish stereotype. But a lot of people are still tall with blonde hair and blue eyes. Whether you move across the country or across the world, there’s nothing that you can do to prevent culture shock. It will happen and it’s part of the process of moving. The only thing you can do is to accept who you are and where you come from and put the best version of yourself forward.