I was not very surprised when I watched the Culture Shock video. Coming from the West Coast to the East Coast, I felt some of the things that surprised the international students in the video. The subtle small things that were different like the way people talked, or the culture here at UR was very surprising to me. However, the academic aspect of their culture shock was different from that of mine. When I came to this University, I was pleasantly surprised that it was very similar to the academic life I had back home. However, I did make the mistake of taking three different reading based classes, which made me think that UR assigns lots and lots of reading.
My culture shock coming to University of Richmond was different. I grew up in California with significantly more diversity then Richmond in general. I grew up around mostly Asian Americans and one can even go through all of high school without befriending a single American person. Coming to this campus was a huge eye opener for me. I realized that I lived in a very diverse place and that the rest of America was not like California. I did have a big culture shock because of the difference of culture here, but I learned to adapt to the culture and began to get comfortable here. At first I did feel out of place because of the difference in the way people talked and the way people acted, but after I found my group of friends, I became more comfortable with this place.
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