The Foreign Service Journal, December 2005

66 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 5 S CHOOLS S UPPLEMENT pack up, TCKs are on their own, vacating their dorm rooms with ticket and passport in hand. • Other students may not know — literally — where you are com- ing from. “ When I tell someone I went to high school in Austria and they say, ‘Oh, where the kangaroos are?’ it makes me think we may not have much in common,” admits Sarah Pettit, a senior at Washington Univer- sity in St. Louis. Feeling different is not helped by the fact that other students might not know quite how to categorize TCKs. For one thing, they can’t relate to the TCKs’ life experiences. “Whenever my friends talked about something, whether it was poli- tics or cars or computer games, all I could add was ‘well, in Italy ...’” says Ian Haight, now in his sophomore year at Bowdoin. “It got to the point where the conversation would die if I said anything.” Happily, Ian reports that his new friends soon “got used to me. And I got more in touch with American culture.” “There is sometimes resentment from the U.S. kids because of the trav- eling you have done and the places you have lived,” says Steve Catt, a junior at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, who arrived there from high school in Tokyo. “Just remember that your actions and words can play a big part in helping them understand. And you can always learn something from them, too.” Chelsea Jensen, a freshman at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, Calif., says, “I came back to the U.S. thinking that everyone would be uncultured. I’ve known countless FS kids who thought the same thing. But in fact there are many American kids who are not the stereotypical ‘proud to be an American because we’re better than everyone else.’” “Be prepared for a lot of ques- tions,” advises Emily Frost, a sopho- more at Hollins University in Roan- oke, Va., who has lived in South and Central America as well as in Guinea. “But be watchful of talking too much Continued from page 64