Varför gör jag det här?

Så. Nu är jetlaggen under kontroll och första skoldagen är avklarad. Några utmaningar har jag redan stött på. Den första var av pengakaraktär. Allt här kostar pengar. Och allt här tvingar dig i praktiken (åtminstone som utbytesstudent) att spendera pengar. Vi ska betala hela hyran direkt, det hade inte jag räknat med. Vi ska dessutom betala i princip alla våra övriga kostnader direkt. Pengarna till dessa kostnader går in på ett kort som man drar vid kassan, när man köper böcker, omelett eller huvudvärkstabletter. Denna kostnad är 2500 dollar, eller med andra ord: snoppmycket pengar.

Den andra utmaningen, eller det var snarare ett bakslag bara, dök upp när jag fick reda på att jag inte hade klarat det standardiserade engelskaprov som vi fått första dagen, och att jag därför blir tvungen att läsa grammatik tre gånger i veckan under hela terminen.

Den tredje utmaningen förklarar jag på engelska nedan. Det ni behöver veta är att detta är en reflektion som vi fått i uppdrag av läraren i kursen "Racial and cultural minorities" att göra. Den innehåller dels en bortförklaring till varför jag helt missuppfattar lärarens fråga och gör bort mig en aning, dels innehåller den ett koketteri kring varför jag valde kursen. Tack för att ni tar er tid.

Journal Week 1

You asked us to write a reflection about why we took this course, and now I know why: because it was so cool!  At first I just couldn’t get hold of what the whole thing was. Until today I haven’t experiences a class like that in my whole life.

Obviously I was a bit, not chocked, but at least caught of guard with the whole grammar/ subject/agency thing. I thought the question you posed was on a so much more complicated level than it actually was, add to that my second language flawed interpretation of your quote or statement, and you end up with what we can agree to be a bad start. Fortunately this isn’t what I will remember when I look back.

Well then, when I’ve gotten that off my chest I’m going to start reflecting about the reasons I chose to attend this course, other than to just state in retrospect that it “was cool”. I’m going to start with why I went to Baldwin Wallace at all. I think, as most of the other exchange students here, that the main reason is the whole experience, the broader picture of the American education system. If you break that down to pieces you will find tendencies that I haven’t even seen back home, including the conversational approach in the classroom, the fairly high pace, peoples’ ability to talk spontaneously in rhetorically impressive narratives, and so forth. These kind of things, or competences if you will, I would want to bring with me back home.

You said after class something like you sometimes are too critical about the U.S. and their relation to, and view on, racial and cultural minorities; correct me if I’m wrong. I think “we Swedes” are able to bring that kind of critical outside perspective too.

However, and this is where I get specific, I would also want to hear about what all of you in America: all the individuals, the different groups or the State have done well regarding these kinds of topics. What can we bring back home to Scandinavia that is regarded as worth striving for, and may be applicable to the Swedish society? I think you, meaning the U.S., in some areas can be seen as a role model. Because now we face one of the biggest challenges in a long time with the current great migration flows, especially from the Middle East region into Europe and Sweden. A lot of people come to our country right now, not because they so badly want to, but because they don’t have any other option. And that is where all the potential knowledge from this course, hopefully, will be very useful.

Vi åkte till Cleveland i lördags. Här kommer några bilder.