Reflection: The semester is ending...

Now that the semester is almost over I want to recommend the three best classes I have had here at Old Dominion University. These classes are both relevant for study abroad students, but also, maybe even more so, relevant for American students.

The first one I want to mention is "Social Inequality" (SOC 320) with professor Mona Danner. In this class you learn how wealth and power is divided in the U.S society, but also why this division is accepted. As I am person who grew up in a highly socialistic society it has been difficult for me to see the arguments for the way this country divide its wealth. This course has helped me get closer to an answer, although I still really don't get why people are not angry of the fact that the richest 10 percent own 80 percent of the wealth (see former post 2-D to 3-D). If it was up to me, I would want every American to take this class, to get an idea off how skewed the society is.

The second class I would like to mention is "Perspectives: The American Dream" (Amst 300) with professor Joseph Cosco. This course teaches you how American mindsets developed up through history and who was included in the American dream and who was not. With text such as "A description of New England" by Captain John Smith, all the way up to song lyrics by Bob Dylan, we analyzed how American society changed and how the American Dream changed. The American Dream relates to the social inequality there is in this country, as everybody strives for their own fortune and believes all it takes is hard work and not the right circumstances.

The third and last class i will recommend is "Public Journalism in a Digital age" (Comm 366) with professor Ashley Hall. In this class you learn how to use the new medias that are popping up everywhere on the Internet and how to integrate journalism skills into these medias to make your source more professional and interesting. Through this class I got to reflect upon my discoveries here in America and put them into words. So especially if you are a study abroad student I would recommend this Class, but also to Americans because it is a class where you learn by doing.

The last two classes would just be a waste of time mentioning. A problem with both of them is the use of learning through remembering and not through practical use. This leads to boring classes and less motivation from my own part.

All in all this semester has been a great experience for me, both from an academic perspective, but also from a personal perspective. The general level here is a bit lower than what I am use to in Denmark and there is a lot of the so called "busywork" that serves the only purpose to make a class harder with no reference to college/university learning.

I want to thank Dr. Danner, Dr. Cosco and Dr. Hall for challenging my preconceived ideas about American learning style.

Cultural difficulties: Censurship

BEEB
What was that?
BEEB, BEEB, BEEB
There it was again.
BEEB, BEEB
I am trying to sleep here
BEEB
Is it from in my room?
I stand up and look around.
BEEB
I'm beginning to be annoyed, where is that noise coming from?

OHHH it's my suite mate watching a stand-up comedy show on the tv in the next room...

Homicide in Norfolk 2009

Already in 2009 there have been ten homicides in the city of Norfolk (http://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-now-norf-homicides.m23,0,5436063.story). The last of these homicide's was perpetrated in a garage on Waterside Drive and I was in that garage only four hours before this incident took place. I left the garage around 10 p.m. Saturday the 21 of Marts and at 2 a.m. Sunday morning Juan Carlos Ovalle-Peralda was shot dead this very place.

It is a bit scary to be in a city that has so many homicides when you are use to live in a city, Aarhus in Denmark, with practically has no murders at all. The two city's has approximately the same population around 250.000 people, but as Norfolk has had ten homicides this year Aarhus has had none. If you google "homicide Norfolk 2009" the first page is news stories about homicides, but if you write the same in Danish for Aarhus the first link is about a theatre play you can go and see in the city.

This just goes to show that all the police cars you see around town are there for a purpose. One of the first things I thought to myself when I arrived in Norfolk was "Is it really necessary with all these cops around here?" and apparently it is. I feel somewhat safe walking around campus at night and have not really given my safety around the city a lot of thought even when I am off campus at night. After these statistics have come to my attention I will be more careful where I go Friday or Saturday night and I have thought to myself "what if I was in the wrong place at the wrong time?".

You can not let fear control your life, but you can keep yourself out of the exposed places and keep away from the wrong crowd. I will continue to go downtown Norfolk to have a laugh and a beer or two, but I will be more aware of the crime problem that haunts this city.

Knowledge is power - The Perry Library

Like any other respectable university ODU has its own library.
Here represented by the Patricia W. and J. Douglas Perry Library.





This is where one can use Odu's computers



This is where we sit and study because of the silence.





And of course there is books, lots of books.

Cars, Skatebords, and Flip-flops

The air is crisp, the sky is clear blue only with a few broken clouds scattered around and the thermometer says 28 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 2 degrees Celsius). As I walk out my door at the Pawhatan apartment the cold hits my face and I think to myself that this was not what I had in mind when I left Denmark, but it didn't matter because I was use to the cold. When I turn the corner and see the road I wished a had bought that car I was contemplating buying when I first arrived. A car is essential in this country where there is a completely different attitude towards distance. At home I could walk for five minutes and be at three different grocery stores. Here if I need to stock my fridge with food I would have to walk for at least an hour to the nearest Wal-Mart.

As I walk there in my own thoughts a young male student passes my by on his skateboard. At first I do not believe what I see. Is he wearing shorts and flip-flops? I think he is. He must be out of his mind. I am walking here freezing my a.. of in my winter coat and jeans and he acts like its summer. As I walk further and the streets become more and more crowded with students I notice that many of the students are wearing what I would categorise as summer clothes. These Americans must either have some very thick skin or immune to cold.

As I walk in the doors at the Battern-Arts and Letters building I have one final thought about this weather. I can't wait for spring-break and the beaches in Miami. Only three days till 76 (26) degrees, sun and maybe a little drink on the side.

Lunch at the Cafeteria in pictures

Remember it all...

In a previous post I have talked about things I do not understand about the American culture. One of the things I have a hard time understanding and getting use to is the way you execute the exams here in the U.S. The majority of the exams emphasises on just remembering the theories and not putting them to use in the real context. The procedures used is mostly multiple choice and short answer test. My theory is though that one can be completely useless in applying the learnt material in the right context and still score an A in these classes, just because you have a good memory. If you can dictate exactly what a book says you get high grades, whereas in Denmark you have to put it into use on a semi-real or real problem in the world.



In some fields as law and medicine having a good memory is essential and here this kind of exams apply perfectly. However in fields like marketing and communication I do not think it applies. Does it make me a better cross cultural communicator if I can remember the four statements: Be patient, sensible, respectful, and observe and listen or a better marketer if I can recite poter's generic strategies. It might make me slightly better that I am aware of these concepts, but if I can't use it in the right situation the theories are useless.

Not to praise professor Hall to much, but I like the way she relates the taught material to the real world and it is clear how you can use the skills you receive through this class. However this is the only class I have that uses this and also the only class that use group work.

In Denmark many of our exams are based on group work and how you use the theories in the right context. In the last exam I had in Denmark before I got here, I had to analyse a real company and find out what some of their communication problems were and try to solve them with the material that was taught in class. The end product was a 40 paged long report, done by two students, on how to engage these problems from different angles. The universities in Denmark work closely with the business world to emulate the real world as good as possible and here in the U.S the outside world is in many classes none existing.

I think we a learn things in different ways, but the way to show you know the material could be improved here in the U.S and I think if America would want to keep up with Europe and Asia in knowledge based societies, they have to restructure much of the education system that is used, but I could be wrong.

A Swipe of Heaven

I was starving. There was a bleak hole in my stormach and I was feeling a bit faint. Luckyly I had my ODU student card on my so I could get dinner at the cafeteria in the old Webb Center.



The way the whole thing works is that you have chosen and paid for a meal-plan, I have 80 meals through the semester. Then a friendly person swipes your card through a machine and it subtracts one meal from your card. After this evening I have 56 meals left. Hope that is enough.

After you have swiped your card you enter the cafeteria, and what a sight when you are use to Danish University cafeterias.



There are multiple stances with different kinds of food that ranges from completely unhealthy to healthy. So it is up to one self which end of the spectrum you chose. This day the main course was roasted turkey with rice, veggies and (of course) gravy. I could have chosen sloppy joe's or, as there are almost every day, the stir-fry with rice or noodles, veggies and meat.



The healthy side of me wasn't satisfied though and the salad bar was calling me.



So the final dish was as follows:



All in all this place is a great alternative to the food-court in Webb and probably the only place you can get a whole meal without cheese, in the whole of Norfolk. Subway is somewhat healthy, but help me god, I can't say no to cheese or for that matter extra cheese. But it seems like the main ingredient of American food is cheese and I am sadly not a opposition of this and after I have had my healthy first course it is straight to either the pizza oven or the nachos stand.



It almost seemed surreal to me when I saw a genuine pizza oven in the middle of the cafeteria. If you want to eat unhealthy it is certainly possible here. I have even seen an American eating cereal for dinner, weird. It is also hard for me to walk out of the cafeteria without a trip to the cake and ice cream stand. A good thing that there also is melon.





This day the wasn't room for cake, so I would have to settle for ice cream and melon. Not bad at all.

There is a reason why there is such a radical difference between Danish and American university cafeterias. Education is free in Denmark and a University does not have to compete for the various students on the same level as in the U.S. This means that to attract students, and their money, to ODU the university has to consider every aspect of the college life and here food is an essential part. This is the same reason there is state of the art fitness rooms, tennis fields and much more on campus. All this is not of the same standard in Denmark. Here the budget is for the most part used for academia.

Interview to better my blog

I wanted to improve my blog and therefore I interviewed three people to get their insight on my topic. I interviewed one Danish guy Frederik, an American guy Erik, and a American girl Micheala.

What I generally found out was that neither of my interviewees had ever followed a blog like mine that portrayed the American college life on ODU, but they all had many foreign friends and one is foreign, and therefore they had some insight on the topic I have chosen for my blog. There was however no place on the internet they knew about that offered this kind of insight. But as Eric stated "I don't really follow any blogs", which they all agreed on was true and because of this couldn't state how my blog compared to others in the bloggosphere.

They all agreed to follow my blog because they found it interesting to see ODU from a different perspective than their own.

2-D to 3-D

I read this on another blog the other day and I think it describes somewhat correctly how hard it is sometimes to understand a different culture.

The best explanation I have to why the U.S. and Europe and their proxies (people from and representatives of) often don’t agree is via a rather abstract, yet enlightening, analogy. Everyone knows we live our lives in a 3-dimensional space (system). We have length width and height for everything around us. We understand these dimensions and use this knowledge to correctly appreciate distances and put the environment around us to the best use. Now imagine a 2 dimensional world… a world your daughter has drawn on a piece of paper. This world has only 2 dimensions, and the people inside it will only be able to think and act in those 2 dimensions. Now think about what would happen when you, a 3dimensional person, would try interacting with the 2d world. If you put your hand on the piece of paper, the little people in the paper world would see the part of your hand coming in contact with their world, ie the parts of your hand coming in contact with the paper.

The blog is named "Angry Romanian in U.S". Just for the record, I do not agree with everything that is posted on this blog, but I still think this analogy fits cultural understanding/misunderstanding. Because there is always a certain aspect of a foreign culture that is hard to understand. I am not saying that the Danish culture is 3-d and the American 2-d, but that when people from American culture looks upon Danish culture there is always some things that will seem 3-d where the Danish is 2-d or vice-versa.

Some of the things I have a hard time understanding here in the U.S are:

The importance of religion. Danish are among the least church going people in the world and for me it seems strange that in a society, which is so evolved and people know about science through history, still believe in religion. I am not saying its wrong, I just do not understand it.

The acceptance of inequality. In 2001 the richest ten percent of U.S citizens accounted for 80 percent of the wealth (Teller-Elsberg et al. 2006, page 3) and in 2000 in Denmark the same richest ten percent accounted for 20 percent of the Danish wealth (http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/economies/Europe/Denmark-POVERTY-AND-WEALTH.html). I don't understand why nobody thinks this fact is horrible and do something about it.

Censorship on television. I can not comprehend why your censorship is as it is. To me it should be reversed somehow. Why can't there be shown nudity, but you can see hard violence. On daytime television you can't see Jeff Daniels on the toilet in Dumb & Dumber, but you can see somebody get shot in the head in CSI. You have the freedom to buy a gun down the street, but if you say the F word on television people are horrified. I don't know who Americans are trying to protect through this weird censorship. Do children become better people if they grow up with this image of the world as a place full of violence, no foul language, and that nudity is something unnatural and forbidden?

Maybe it is me that can't see the full picture of how your society works, as mentioned before you are 3-d to me (or even 4-d). I will in future posts comment on differences in our two societies that I find peculiar.

Basketball @ the TED Constant Hall

The first real event I went to here in the States was a women basketball game at the Ted Constant Center. The Lady Monarchs were playing George Mason, but the funny thing in my opinion was that there was more activity on the court when the game was paused and therefore the breaks were the most entertaining. Maybe it was because the Lady Monarchs killed the other team 73 to 42 and the game was not that intensive and nothing real exiting happened in the game. When the game was paused on the other hand cheerleaders were dancing everywhere, the marching band was playing different cool songs and everybody was cheering along. In colleges in the US I believe what is know as "school spirit" is a big deal. This was shown in various cheers i.e. every time a free throw went in the basket everybody yelled out: hu ha ODU.

When the game was over the team, the cheerleaders, the mascots and the managing staff stood in a line singing the ODU song and the ODU spectators sang along, which again emphasized the feeling towards our university and the way "school spirit" is portrayed to the outside world. As we don't have college/university sports in Denmark, this was a fun experience for me.

We do not have school sports teams in Denmark because education is free and therefore scholarships are unnecessary. That is why there is no competition neither in high school or college to receive these prestiges scholarships. What we do have is "city spirit" in the sports world. If people are into soccer or handball, which are the biggest two sports in Denmark, they follow the city or local team. In regards to school it is much more a place you come only to attend classes and then you go home or hang out with friends anywhere else but school. School is for school work, except the bar in the basement at Aarhus School of Business or the traditional Friday bars at every higher education institute in Denmark. Here we let our hair down and relax, and quite frequently have parties that are known for being wild.

Just a fun fact to leave you with: In Denmark you can buy alcohol in stores when you are 16 and in bars and clubs when you are 18.

Welcome to ODU from a Danish Perspective.

I have created this blog so everybody who is interested in their own (the American) culture from another cultures perspective or anyone who is interested how college life in America is persived by a person from Scandinavia. I will discribe how college life at Old Dominion University comes across to a Danish student who is not use to the Amrican culture and all this entails.

I have travelled around Europe all my life, but this is my first adventure to "God's own country" and I would like to share this journey with you.

I hope you will find ODU from a Danish Perspective very interesting.