My American classmates

Before coming here, most rumors about American classmates in the US are negative. It seems to be a common sense that the language barrier is not the only problem existing between international students and American students. However, my experience in Drucker School is totally different, at least in my opinion.

Since this community is so diverse and international students are almost half of the class, although we do have about 50% of American classmates, American culture does not dominating the classroom experience. There are more than ten times I have heard this, "If you ask me(American) to make a presentation in Japanese or Chinese, I definitely can not do as well as you did." Whenever I this, I really appreciate their understanding and respectful attitude.

Recently, I have a project with three other international students and one American. Although we have not presented in the class yet, I have learned a lot. I am grateful that the American classmate is so patiently explain every detail and difference in the language part. In this team, he is the only one who use English as mother language, so I believe he somehow feels like an outsider. Although everyone is kind and helpful in my team, I understand how much effort the American classmate put in our project, not even mention that he is the only one who has full-time job.

The US is  a huge country with a lot of philosophy that I can not totally agree. On the other hand, I do think we need to learn the open-minded attitude and diverse perspective. Of course, not everyone is as lucky as me and not everyone has good American team members, but there indeed is some very friendly, understanding, and helpful Americans that are trying to build positive relationship with internationals. I met a lot of them here in Claremont during this six months. 

In short, I just want to appreciate them and I wish I can be as open minded and helpful as them.