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Culture Shock
This morning I was reading an account of a man about my age who moved from Chicago to Paris. He said people had warned him about culture shock, so he thought he would just go ahead and treat it like people used to do with chicken pox—expose himself to it, get infected, then go ahead and get over it and, in the process, become immune to it. He says this did not work because culture shock is not like a virus you catch all at once, it is more like months of little hen pecks—incessant pecks and feather-pulling. There were things like the struggle to find and purchase toothpaste, finding a toilet plunger to purchase, trying to understand why France seems not to offer shower curtains as a standard thing, trying to understand when natives speak a language that he THOUGHT he was fluent in before moving to France, and sorting out what combination of bills and coins are needed to pay for something. The result was depression, anger, homesickness, and a sort of brain fog. I read up on this in Wikipedia, and it is a recognized phenomenon.
Then I started thinking about when I first moved to Texas 37 years ago. Not only did I move halfway across the country, but I moved from urban/suburban to rural/small town. I realized that I had pretty major culture shock for at least the first six months. I started thinking about the people leaving the big cities and moving to the San Saba area. As little time as I spend in town, I have noticed lots of newcomers. In our business, we often work with people who have, for one reason or another, fled the big cities to live on acreage in the country. Unless these folks grew up out in the country or small towns, they are facing pretty major culture shock whether they move to a nice house in town or a place out in the country. Be kind to them and be patient with them. If they stick around, ie. survive the culture shock, they will assimilate and be great members of our community.
Next I thought about kids going off to college, especially a really big college, and most especially small-town kids going off to a really big college. Even kids who have gone to big suburban high schools in affluent areas can be completely unprepared for what they will face at a big college, especially if that college is in an urban area. How about those kids that go to college far, far away? Even right here in Texas the various regions of the state are wildly different from one another. Texas A&M-Kingsville, where I used to teach and where my daughter and son-in-law graduated, is surrounded by Deep South Texas culture which is different enough from San Saba County to be the equivalent of going to college in a foreign country. I have thought before that doing some anticipatory socialization with kids before they go off to college would boost their chances for success as much or more than academic preparation.
This former city girl needs to snap out of all this thinking about culture shock and get to work. I have eggs to gather and chickens to feed, a bull to locate, a garden to clean up, and a suspected leaky water line to dig up. But I reserve the option to write more on this topic in the future. SpringCreekArtsGuild@gmail.com