Pak TP# 8

During our next meeting, I asked my TP about his family and found out that his parents were dominantly lawyers and researchers in Brazil.  He has an older brother who is also a lawyer and he told me that his parents wanted him to be a lawyer as well, but he decided to pursue a career in chemistry instead.  He asked me how to approach people and try to talk to people in the US because he has tried to strike up a conversation with them, but unfortunately he told me that the conversations did not go very far.  He told me that people here were very busy with their work and did not appreciate a lot of human interaction.  I was surprised at this remark and it also got me to think about MY everyday life and it was pretty true, I do not usually talk to people who are strangers and am very focused and dedicated to my work, then I looked at other people and found it was the same.  I told him that it is an unfortunate culture shock for him and that a motto in American culture is that ‘time is money,’ and he nodded his head in acknowledgement, but I could see that he did not quite understand the concept and why people could not take a few moments out of their lives to talk to strangers. 

I then shared with him that usually, Americans ask each other’s names then the people should have a common ground on a certain thing that will be the topic of conversation.  I used the example of a chemistry lab and told him that a good “ice-breaker” (which I explained to him what it meant) was some humor as well. 

He listened tentatively and asked me how I would approach a stranger and I told him that I would ask for their name and then find a common topic to talk about, if we were at school I would ask them about classes, if at a grocery store, I would talk about the products. 

It was a very interesting meeting that I had with my TP and it also opened my eyes to how social yet reclusive we all are.