How Well Do You Know the United States?

One of my favorite parts of working at the school I do is that the vast majority of my students have never been to the United States. Exchange years in high school are not all that uncommon in Austria, and I know that TAs in other, wealthier Gymnasien frequently encounter students who've spent a year in Iowa, Alabama, or Montana. (You have to pay extra to get the "good states" like California or New York, so you'll meet Austrians who've lived in the most random f-ing places.) At the very least, many of them have gone to either New York City, Miami,* or Los Angeles on family vacations.

Not so here at Brigittenauer Gymnasium. There are a few exceptions, mostly in the audio classes and sports classes, where students tend to be wealthier because they have to pay Verein (sports club) fees or buy expensive musical equipment. (I even have one student whose mother grew up in Cranberry, PA.) But, for the most part, the closest my students have come to experiencing life in the United States is a dinner at T.G.I. Friday's.

So I get to be their first real introduction to American culture. I've recently led some pretty successful lessons for 4th and 5th formers (13-15-year-olds) where I give them a true/false quiz about life in the United States. Here are some of my favorite questions from that quiz. (Highlight the white area under each question to get the answer, and some comments from me.)

Schüler Say the Darndest Things: Advanced Cuts

I've mentioned before that my students are hilarious. Many times, their humor can be appreciated by anyone, but some of their jokes are more subtle. The more you know about Austria, the funnier they get.

"I'm Gonna Fail!"

"Harvard has failed us," goes the speech by Scott Levin-Gesundheit, my former PAF, at Harvard gradation. "And by that, I mean it's given us B-pluses."

I have, throughout my school career, heard from countless friends and schoolmates that "I'm so gonna fail," "I totally failed that exam," etc. And somehow, it all came out okay. No one actually failed out of high school, or of Harvard, or even failed a single class. "Failure" in the American school system is a subjective -- doing more poorly than you had hoped or expected -- rather than an objective experience. Not so in Österreich.

A Purpose, It's That Little Flame

On Friday, I was leading a discussion with a small group of sixth formers (16-year-olds) about social problems, and making a difference in the world. Suddenly, one of the students, who had been super-engaged and participatory throughout the discussion, turned to me and said, "I feel like it sounds so awful when I talk. Like beschissenes German English." It was a problem that I know well.

I Yell Because I Care, Part 2: Lines in the Sand

"I guess it's like my mama says, I yell because I care." - Ariana Waynes

This is the second part of a three-part reflection on the subject of foreigners, and being a foreigner, in Austria. In Part 1, I discussed my own positionality regarding this issue, and whether I am qualified to speak up on this subject. Part 2 describes the current situation with immigrant incorporation in Austria, using examples from my personal experience. In Part 3, I turn once again to my own position, questioning how I can best show solidarity with other Ausländer in Austria and, in some small way, contribute to a solution. 

I had always known, on some level, that discrimination against people with "migration backgrounds"* was a problem in Austria. But I had always considered it to be something that happens "out there" -- in villages, among older people. Not in the city I love, and coming from my friends and colleagues, from people who have been nothing but hospitable towards me. Not in my school, my ostensibly progressive, weltoffene (cosmopolitan) school, "wo Vielfalt Schule macht." 

Drill, Baby, Drill!

I love my job. The kids are, for the most part, engaged and interested in discussing American life and politics, and almost every day I come home with a new story to tell about something my students said. The teachers have begun to warm up to me, recognizing that I can actually lead really great lessons and giving me freedom to let my imagination run wild in coming up with fun activities that relate to the topics they're discussing in class. Not all of my lessons are home runs, of course, but almost every week, at least one student in one of my classes will come up to me and say, "That was really fun. Thank you." Teaching really is the best thing ever.

As great as things are at the Karajangasse are, though, there's one dark reality staring all of us in the face: These kids are not going to do well on the Matura.

Schüler Say the Darndest Things

In general, I've been really impressed by the English levels of my students. I am, of course, getting a bit of a biased sample, because only the ones who feel comfortable enough to speak in English tend to participate in class. And I'm not surprised that some of them prefer to not speak, because the kids can be quite brutal to each other. On Wednesday, for example, I had one of my sixth-form classes do small group discussions about various issues in the American election. One of the groups was talking about Afghanistan, and so one of the boys said, "Yes, war is bad. It costs much death of soldiers." Whereupon his partner gave him a dirty look and said, "Much death of soldiers? Seriously?"

Because young people in Austria watch so much American television*, they have a really good idea of what correct English sounds like -- even if they can't quite speak it themselves. Stefan, a friend of mine from my dorm, for example, speaks absolutely awful English. (He once asked me how to translate "Studenten" when he was trying to have a conversation with one of the people in the dorm who speaks no German.) But another time, we got to talking about TV shows, and he quotes me an entire scene of Family Guy, in perfect English (punctuated, of course, by German phrases like "Und dann schaut er durchs Fenster und sagt...").

I try to be supportive of my students even when they make mistakes, so that they'll continue to want to speak. Sometimes, though, I find it hard not to laugh along with their classmates at some of the things they say. And so, in the spirit of Schadenfreude, here are some of my favorite exchanges with students in the past three weeks:

Bäck tsu School

"WIR WOLLEN KEINE WANDERKLASSE" screams the sign in large letters, surrounded by more personal messages from individual students. It's a protest against the decision of the school where I'm teaching to force one group of seniors to move classes each period, rather than giving them a room of their own, which is normal. To my students, it's a constant source of irritation, a reminder that they attend a "ghetto school," as several of them have complained to me. (I can't really comment, as I've only ever been to one Austrian school, but my students are really engaged and the building is not lacking in facilities in the least.) To me, however, it's a daily reminder of the ways that Austrian schools differ from the ones I attended in the United States.

Learning German: die Stempelgesellschaft

The largest employer in the United States (and the world, incidentally), depending on whether you include public-sector work, is either the Department of Defense or Walmart.* The largest employer in Austria, by contrast, is the City of Vienna. This size is indeed appropriate, as Vienna accounts for 1/4 of the entire population of the country, and the city provides a vast number of services that Americans could only dream of, like a dense network of free youth centers, an on-point public transit system, and a really cool new initiative that aims to bring people together to create community charters.

But it also means that you can have experiences with bureaucracy that are quite frustrating / funny, depending on your outlook. Like, for example, registering for university. Even before I arrived in Austria, I had filled out an online registration form and submitted various documents to the Fulbright Commission, who would visit the admissions office in person to submit them. And so, I thought, with all my paperwork turned in, my matriculation papers and student ID would be waiting for me when I arrived in-country.

False.

What if this wasn't just for a year?

When I told my roommate that I had already lived in Austria on two separate occasions, and was coming back for a third time, the first question she asked was, "Would you ever consider staying here long-term?"

It's a valid question, and one, I'll admit, I've given a lot of thought over the past year or so. Because I am getting into the meat of my twenties, and more and more of my friends are meeting people they could see themselves settling down with. And so the question of location takes on added importance.

Migration / Integration

I wrote this as a reflection paper for one of my classes (Penetrating Ethnic Communities) after we visited a mosque and speaking with some of its leaders about what it's like to be Turkish and/or Muslim in Austria. Writing it really helped me to clarify a lot of my thoughts on integration and xenophobia (Ausländerfeindlichkeit) in Austria. It's in German right now (I'll try to post a translation later), but I wanted to post it here anyway, both because I think it's important to understanding what I've learned here and because I want documentation of my German skills at this specific moment -- no matter if I advance or regress after this semester is over, I'll know that at one point, I could write semi-fluently.

I ♥ My Uni

Universitätshauptgebäude (main building)

Going Deep

For the required Central College Abroad course on Thursday, we met with students from the WU (Wirtschaftsuniversität, squint at the last part of that word and you should be able to figure out that it's one of the universities in Vienna) who are taking a course on intercultural communication in preparation for studying abroad in the United States next semester. We had each prepared posters on cultural differences between Austria and America (the normal stuff: Americans are fat, but have lots of social mobility; Austria is not Australia, but has a strong social welfare state; etc.) Then we ate lunch together at the WU cafeteria. The word got out that I went to Harvard (because I met a kid who'll be studying at Bentley University, which is apparently in Waltham, even though I'd never heard of it before), and everyone wanted to see my student ID card. Then, somehow, the other Americans left, but I got roped back into the classroom for another four hours of intercultural communication class, in German this time.

And my God, was I glad I stayed.

Geeking Out

Every semester, students on the Central College Abroad blog (where, if you so desire, you can read a cleaned-up / de-radicalized version of these posts) make some sort of joke about forgetting the "study" portion of study abroad. When you’re a sociology student, though, the boundaries between your everyday world and your academic world often blur. When I go to a lame party, I "put on an ethnographic gaze," and analyse the social interactions going on around me. I can’t take a walk or ride a bus without noticing the ways in which social structures and social relationships have left marks on the physical environment of the neighborhoods I’m passing. At the same time, my academic work often involves talking to people. I get to ask them about lives, about how they see the world, and about how the world sees them – the kind of deep conversations that are increasingly rare in a society dominated by superficial interactions.

Because of that, I don’t feel so much tension between the desire to do well academically here and the desire to fully immerse myself in the study abroad experience. I chose classes that would enrich my understanding of Austrian culture by providing historical and theoretical background on just the topics that fascinate me. And because academics are an important and exciting part of my time here, I wanted to provide a brief introduction to my classes, all of which are taught in German at the University of Vienna unless otherwise noted. Details after the jump.

Penetrating Ethnic Communities

(I love it when Austrians try to speak English.) That's the given English translation of a seminar I’m taking, which basically throws 25 people in a room for three hours to informally discuss contemporary immigration to Austria. Today was the first course meeting, and it was one of the most fascinating experiences of my time in Austria. 

We first spoke in small groups about our perceptions of immigration / migrants / foreigners in Austria, and what types of contact we had with them. The strongest cultural difference I noticed came when we were trying to formulate a definition of assimilation / integration. No one mentioned naturalization as a marker of integration, so I asked directly, “Would you consider naturalization part of the process of integration? Do you have to be an Austrian citizen to be 'successfully' assimilated?” “No,” my groupmates said. “You can only become a citizen once you’re assimilated.” And that, I think, is a very different formulation of the national community. Austrian citizenship is like a prize that you get once you’ve already become Austrian, a visible marker of an internal transition. “The Austrians” are integrated, because the un-integrated are not permitted to become Austrians.

All the Small Things

Sometimes I feel like it's cheating to go to Europe for an "intercultural experience." Austrian and American cultures really aren't that different -- on the surface. We consume the same products and lifestyles (thanks global capitalism!), think on the individual level, believe in progress (we're Westerners, after all), and have a strict concept of time. It takes time to recognize cultural differences between Austria and America, because they're hidden below the surface of this hegemonic Western consumption-oriented cultural facade. That's why I'm here for five months, instead of two weeks. And during my first week of classes, some of these small differences made themselves clear.

Vokabelheft

I’ve been keeping a running list of vocabulary words -- German words that I heard for the first time, but was able to figure out through context clues; German words I read or heard without any comprehension whatsoever (thankfully, this is rarer than the first type); and English words, whose German equivalents I desperately sought during conversation, only to come up empty, leading me to either gesticulate frantically or describe around it using other words. (Dropping in English is always an option, but one I try to avoid when I’m not with other Americans. It seems kind of rude to me. But maybe that’s just a projection of some internalized “you should speak my language” Americanness, and Europeans don’t actually feel that way.)

My Vokabelheft (vocabulary-notebook), as I call it, reads like a running commentary of my time here. When I’m diligent about writing down new words, I don’t need a proper journal.