The Transition Artist

Right now, I feel more myself than I have in a long time. 

Over the course of the past year, I have often found myself struggling with a sense of who I am in the context of different environments. I’ve been somewhat identified by my “background.” I’m Kate from Houston, Texas; Kate the American; Kate who is half Mexican; Kate who is fluent in French; and, mostly, Kate who is figuring out who Kate is. A large part of my miniature identity crisis can be attributed to the fact that I spent 12 months trying to fit in and figure out who I was in another cultural context. 

In America, I don’t usually have to question who I am. I generally know whether or not my personality clicks with somebody else’s, I have a sense of whether or not I have made a good first impression, and I typically know how to talk to people. In France, on the other hand, I was a little outside of my comfort zone in all of those respects. I didn’t know whether or not my personality came off too strong if I was asking a lot of questions or smiling too much, nor did I know whether my initial interactions with people equated a good first impression or not. Many times, I wasn’t sure what to say because I couldn’t figure out how to translate it fast enough, or hadn’t gained enough fluency just yet to come up with quick responses to friendly teasing. In a lot of ways, I was still testing the waters of my “French-ness,” and wanted to figure out how to best express “who I am” in the context of French culture.

As it turned out, though, who I am is very deeply rooted in my American upbringing. 

For at least the first 6 months of my time in France, I compared French culture (and other cultures I visited, for that matter) to my own. Both verbally and mentally, I would identify differences or similarities, and always found myself telling stories or explaining various facets of American culture to foreigners simply because I thought it was interesting. I came to realize, though, that my concepts of “American” and “foreigner” played huge roles in my understanding of who I am, and my level of comfort in a new cultural setting. While I may have considered cultural differences interesting discussion topics, it was not solely out of interest that I discussed it.

Subconsciously, I was placing my frame of reference and trying to understand someone else’s. It is only looking back on these conversations that I realize that I was searching for common ground, and hoping to use differences that I was observing and experiencing as a point of interest for both myself and someone of another culture, hoping that the other person might be interested in undergoing the same learning process that I was. In order for me to start feeling comfortable in my the context of French culture, I had to realize that my personality, though normal and fairly easily understood in my exchanges with other Americans, might be construed differently; I had to come to terms with the fact that I am different. And different is okay.

In the Southern United States, I fit in. I am outgoing, a little loud, friendly, and open to conversations with strangers. I smile at store clerks, and ask them how their day is going. I strike up conversations with people I don’t know out of politeness, and I ask somewhat personal questions even in first encounters. While I thought this was fairly normal and simply indicative of openness, I found that my constant smiling and facilitation of conversation didn’t feel very genuine or comfortable in the context of Parisian culture. Perhaps a more closed nature is universal to people in big cities, but combined with the included language barrier, I experienced this new phenomenon as culture shock.

I battled cultural misunderstandings and struggled to create genuine friendships in France for the large majority of my first months there. Even in meeting new people over the summer, toward the end of my year there, I still found myself feeling conscious of how I expressed myself with strangers if they weren’t American. Now, back in my own culture, I have lost the pre-evaluative aspects of my interactions with people. I don’t have to work hard to find common ground, nor do I have to contextualize my frame of reference (for example, by identifying the fact that I’m American) in order for someone to understand my frame of reference. Though these things are in many ways both refreshing and relieving, I do miss the dynamism of my foreignness. 

However, I recognize now that the time and effort I spent on figuring out how to identify myself and adapt my personality to another culture allowed me to understand my own inner-workings and character traits better than before. The feeling I now have of finally settling into myself has made me realize that sometimes it takes crossing over to something foreign and coming back again to figure out what is at a person’s core. I have identified my constants: I will never shed being American; it’s the culture that raised me. I will always be curious, spontaneous, and eager to engage in conversation. Adapting to other cultures will always be a little challenging, but knowing these things about myself in advance makes that process much easier.