(And Finally Learned How to Fit In)
By Divya Pradhan
So many times, I was dangerously close to jumping on the next flight home to India.
For many miserable months after I came to the U.S. to be a professor, I wondered what I had done to become instantly the most unpopular teacher - nay, person - on campus. That was 1995.
Cut to now. I can laugh about how I was once an outcast. Now, people come to me for advice. What changed?
I confess it took a long time for me to figure out what went wrong. Granted, the odds were against me adjusting easily. I’d arrived in the U.S. knowing nothing about American culture. I’d had almost no time to ease into my new life before I started teaching at the university. Apart from myself, I knew no one else on campus from my part of the world; so I had no one I could turn to for advice.
I stumbled many times before I learned how to fit in. (I promise, you don’t know embarrassment until you’ve told a classroom of American college students “I am so gay” when you meant to say “I’m happy today”.)
But then things got worse. I started to notice people actually leaving the room when they saw me coming.
That’s when I knew I was in serious trouble. Somehow, I’d managed to alienate everyone I met. Nothing I tried to do to win over my new associates worked (not even making my famous pappadams!)
I had to see rock bottom to understand what I had been doing so wrong.
Back in India, I’d lived in a tiny, cramped space surrounded by loved ones. In America, I had so much space and so little company; I was consumed by loneliness.
I coped with the emptiness by clinging to new acquaintances. I’d follow them everywhere they went - the parking lot, the dorms, the labs - day after day. Until eventually, these people became so weary of me they wanted nothing more to do with me.
Americans are not used to the same level of intimacy with strangers that is commonplace in India. Friendships take longer, and must be earned. Once I learned this important cultural nuance, I backed off, and it was not long before many friends and genuine sense of well-being followed.
My advice to new immigrants, is give yourself a cling test: Do you show up uninvited? Do you stop by to see new acquaintances more often than they approach you? Just remember, in America, the secret to making friends is remembering to take it slow.
Dr. Divya Pradhan is a guest author for MeltingSpot. She is a professor, researcher and international affairs counselor at the University of Alabama, Huntsville. Email Divya at: prd@hiwaay.net.
