So, I've been meaning to write this for awhile. I wanted to wait a bit because I wanted my emotions to cool down. to try to treat it fairly. And to see if things would look different in time. Actually, I feel more strongly than ever that I was not ultimately at fault here and that I did the best I could with what I had.
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I tend to go over things in my head. I repeat conversations I had, brief moments, how I looked, what I said. Always, I castigate myself thoroughly. So I have spent considerable time--much of the last year in fact--trying to understand my semester in India. Was it me? Was it them? Was it really my fault? Was I really just not good enough? Am I a failure? I tend to automatically assume everything is my fault. I am beginning to conclude, after examining myself to the bone that it was not me. Not that I'm perfect--I made plenty of mistakes. Normal ones, for a foreigner, for someone who just didn't know. I did the best I could and, with a little understanding things might have been much different. So what happened?
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First, I am always slow to make friends. This is normal for me. It is not the best state of affairs--but I am horribly shy and this is what I have to work with. I must admit, too, however, that from the beginning it was clear that, though the other people in the program were very nice, inherently good people, we had very little in common. Though I tried very hard and there was nothing "wrong" (save for this one particular girl who was just a total bitch the whole time and who, I'm ashamed to say, I still hate) I just felt from the very first like an outsider, an outcaste. They were loud and giggly, screeching and talking constantly about the most banal inanities. I couldn't even pretend to be interested (which is a failing on my part--but I tried, at least, I really did try as hard as I could to connect. But I was getting over a broken heart and I had been to India before and they made me very tired and in general gave me headaches. I would try to sit with them--joining the group at lunch and such--it seemed like no matter where I would sit, no matter how hard I tried to be part of the circle, when others would come it would just magically turn out that that all sat in such a way that I was outside the circle, off in a corner again. I say "magically" because I saw no evidence that they were excluding me on purpose. It just happened that way and I didn't know how to be included. They weren't mean people, when I pushed d myself in they couldn't help but include me, but I always felt like they were just tolerating me and that they didn't really want me there. No once did a single person invite me anywhere, sit with me if there was anyone else around, or include me if I didn't insist. I always felt that I somehow made them uncomfortable, that I was a downer, nit fun to be with--I felt like they didn't want me around. I have an almost supernatural ability to listen to every conversation in a room, or on a bus, an after I heard several rather mean remarks to the tune of "she's weird!" I gave up, hurt.
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I know I am hard to get to know. I have AS and it can make communication difficult. I AM "weird". I can't help it. In fact, I seem perfectly normal to me, if I could only make people see into my world so they could understand me. But I guess it works both ways. A lot of the time, I don't understand them, either. I usually have to make something of an educated guess about social stuff. I can't read the signals everyone else reads unconsciously. I'm much better at it than I was, but I still make a lot of mistakes. I will never get "better" because I have to learn these things by rote--but every person and every situation is different and it is hard to generalize. I debated back and forth about disclosing this to the school. Because AS is rare, many people do not understand. They hear only that it is a form of autism and immediately picture a "typical" form of autism. They either deny completely that I have it--because I seem too "normal" (if they only knew what I go through to appear that way)--or they treat me like a sick person, like I'm going to suddenly freak out and start acting crazy. I decided not to tell anyone, because I hate being treated like I have a disability, like a freak. I didn't want to give them any more ammunition. What is more, I was terrified that they would decide I couldn't do the program and send me home. Yes. It IS illegal to discriminate; however, they may have decided it would be too stressful for me, to taxing on them, and that I did not have the ability to get along. I wanted to judge for myself what I can or cannot do. I knew it would be very hard. That I would have extra challenges. My differences are not THAT different. I mostly present as eccentric, odd, weird etc--but with time and patience usually as people get to know me--provided they are flexible enough to accept me as eccentric--they learn that there are many good and loveable qualities. To be found in me as well. I am an inherently nice person. I want to get along. I am kid, helpful, loyal and a good friend. I just need a little understanding. I have almost no problems when I travel as a foreigner, especially if there are language barriers. People assume that English is my second language perhaps, and are more patient about communicating meaning, rather than paying attention to signals, tone and body language I don't get and often use differently. (I only understand that I do these things differently because of the problems I've had communicating. I don't verbalize well; I can write. At any rate, I can't say if withholding this information was a mistake or not. If they would have been so closed minded as to bar me from the program if I had told them (and I really think they would have) then I definitely did the right thing. As I said before, knowing might have made them take it easier on me--but it could (and again, I really think it would have) have made it even harder--just another point of separation between me and them.
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I dismissed this behavior, as well as all the bouncing around giggling and shrieking, to our age differences. They were all 19-22, I was 26. It did make a huge difference, though I didn't want it to. I have many friends their ages at home--but they seemed much more mature/steady. I had been to India before. I said that already. But I also have a knack for picking up little mannerisms, speech patterns and the like which help a good deal in getting along in a foreign culture. What is more, I had been watching far too many Bollywood movies and had this fantasy dream of being "just like an Indian girl" I did everything I could to assimilate right away. I ate, dressed and shat like Indians do (or at least how I thought they did--and, unless I'm a total idiot, do not believe I was far off) from the very first day. This also set me apart as the others has not been to India and were slower to assimilate. They saw me as a suck-up poser wannabe (to quote three separate conversations) a snob. I think they thought that I thought I was all that. They acted like I was putting on airs and getting above myself. If I ever acted like I thought I was superior, it was unintentional and I certainly didn't feel that way. I was miffed that they didn't like me, their screeching did get on my nerves, but mostly I was just excited and wasn't about to let their opinions stop me from doing and being what I wanted (as far as dressing Indian clothes etc--I didn't take it as a chance to be a selfish brat, which is how it sounds to me when I read the above sentence.)
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So I had social difficulties. I simply didn't connect with anyone from the program. This was terribly sad for me, but not the end of the world. By the end of the program, many of us had become quite friendly, if not friends. May of the girls I deeply liked and respected--we just didn't hang out. However, these difficulties were hard on my ego and self-esteem and fed into late problems which were more severe.
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The next issue I had was sexual harassment. Let me just say, as far as I can tell, the men in India are CRAZY. Of course, it isn’t all men. I don’t really mean that all Indian men are crazy. But I do mean there are bands of guys hanging around everywhere who love hassling the gals. Like sex-starved packs of feral dogs. A pretty girl who pokes her nose outdoors in Jaipur (where I lived--other places were not as bad, and Rajasthan, in general, was by far the worst) WILL be harassed, not once but a dozen times from all quarters. Really. I'm not exaggerating. If you happen to be white--god help you. Many many other cultures around the world only know US culture through two things: movie and MTV. Is it any wonder that American women are considered "easy" nearly everywhere (I'm putting it nicely--one day I'll have to do a paper on the Western Whore, a sort of reverse "Orientalism".) I do not consider myself exceptionally beautiful, however I (apparently--since every man who saw me told me "you look just like Indian girl") seem to have indian-ish features while being extremely pale, brownish-blondish, and blue-eyed. Apparently that combination is like Spanish fly for Indian men. Because, holy god! Was I harassed!! I couldn't take two steps without being jeered at, yelled to (disgusting things when I could understand them) "accidentally" brushed against--or outright grabbed. I'd been to India before and experienced some of this--but it is different when you are a tourist and going home in a few weeks.
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The program admins noticed that I was having problems and called me in to talk to me. I told them that I was having trouble connecting and was pretty bummed about it. She asked if this had happened in the past, and I was forced to give an honest answer--yes. And no it didn't get better. I felt I couldn't go into a long explanation about how if people were a little more open minded about "weirdness" that usually things worked out. Diplomatically, I said we were all very different and didn't seem to have much in common, but I hope that as they got to know me they might understand me better. The admin concluded I was depressed and should be on medication. At that point, I did not even consider talking about the problems I was having dealing with the sexual harassment. My host family had simply asked me: weren’t you warned? And well, why did you come, then? And concluded by telling me to stay in. We had been warned, after being told I was depressed and already feeling like I was being labeled a "problem" I didn't want them to decide I couldn't take it and send me home. The attitude I got the entire time was: you must adapt yourself to India, India will not adapt to you. Sexual harassment is part of India--deal with it. For awhile, I was able to do this, largely through staying home all the time and only going out when necessary. I didn't see the city. I didn't meet real Indians. I sat in my room, being served meals on a silver tray (in my room, alone, while the family ate together) and studied. I always had my homework done on time. However, it would sometimes take me days or even a week to get it printed. Computer access at the school was minimal, and though there were many cyber cafes, I was afraid to go out by myself and didn't know how to do anything on my own. Needless to say, this got me labeled as a procrastinator, and my grades suffered terribly (as well as my self-esteem. Meanwhile, the terrible loneliness continued. Few of my friends at home wrote me. I continued to be unsuccessful at my attempts at connecting with other students (progress was made, but slowly) my teachers slowly lost faith in me, and I felt rejected by my host family who were very kind but very formal and kept their distance almost totally. Why couldn't we just be people together? Didn't they like me? Was I doing something wrong? I just want to be a good daughter to them and to be truly part of the family! I became very anxious, I couldn't do anything right, it seemed. I started to get depressed for real because it seemed that no matter what I tried it went wrong or was misinterpreted. There was this one girl who constantly picked or sneered at everything I did. She wasn't a big deal, but our constant quarrelling hurt my credibility even further. Living with the harassment on a day to day basis, especially coupled with the angst I was having about not connecting and the pressures I was getting from the school started to undermine and erode my self-confidence and esteem. Here I was trying my hardest to look, act, dress, and talk like a "good" girl. Trying so hard to fit in, be liked, and make friends. Trying so hard to be good in Hindi (which I kept failing). Trying to be good in school. Feeling terrified to go outside. Feeling like I had no one to talk to and feeling like I had no one I could safely confide in. I didn't have a support system there, not having been able to connect with anyone, so I had no one to go around with. Also I lived some distance from the school and was only near one other person that I knew. I was so terribly horribly lonely! I am shy and timid and haven't had much experience at being independent. I felt trapped; I felt like no one cared.
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The "last straw" so to speak, had to do with my independent project. I am obsessed with Bollywood. I wanted to do a project on it and have an opportunity to meet people who worked in the Industry (yes, I had a starry-eyed fantasy of being “discovered”—it actually isn’t an impossibility.) I started planning and researching before I left for the semester. I had my methodology worked out. According to the admins, it was a good methodology. For some reason, I simply could not get the idea of the project across to my advisor. I do not know why. Everyone else who read the proposal understood, why couldn’t she get it? I wanted to compare changes with a particular set of social mores/customs as portrayed in bollywood films by two specific directors over a specific time period with changes in attitudes across generations in “real life”. I planned to create a rubric which I would answer for each movie, a list of 20-30 questions which would give me insight into customs/etc from movies. I had a survey which I planned to distribute at shopping malls in Bombay (studying middle to upper class people, since this fits the demographic usually portrayed in the movies I was using. If I had had more time, I would have tried to poll people from other social strata as well.) The questions on the survey would indicate 1) what popular opinions concerning the changes in portrayal of these customs/mores in Bollywood were and how they had changed and 2) how customs in real life might have changed. I asked a lot of indirect questions here—you can’t just go up and say “How have your customs changed?” you know. By comparing the results I hoped I would find something I could call significant or at least be able to make a statement about. Since the directors are two of my favorite directors and I’ve seen all of the movies I was planning on using several times, I was pretty sure I was already seeing a trend. I hoped that, allowing for cultural lag, I would see a similar trend in public opinion. Since movies represent sort of a modern mythology, acceptance of certain themes/archetypes in cinema should imply a growing open-mindedness in the culture at large. I did take religion into account as well as variances in age. Anyway, my advisor would listen to the above and then say something like: “Why don’t you study the changes in costume over time in bollywood cinema?” Or “I don’t see what movies have to do with the surveys?” The first question frustrated me because I was trying to study cinema as a mythological system and its relationship with the cultural system and costumes were really not anything I was interested in. To study them seems silly and superfluous. The second question frustrated me because it was like saying she didn’t understand the connection between cinema and culture—I didn’t know how to explain it to her any better than I have already explained it to you. I showed her my example surveys. She still didn’t get the connection but couldn’t offer any ideas about how to make the questions more clear or give me any advice on finding an outside advisor (one of the requirements). Instead she told me I had to be independent and figure it out myself. I honestly had no clue as to how to go about this and pretty much felt like I was going to throw up and or pass out when I thought about randomly phoning up some university professor who had no connection to the program I was in, just some guy at the local university who had never heard of me and begging him to help me. I panicked. I froze. Finally, this ended with her telling me that she thought my project might actually work—but that she thought that I personally didn’t have what it took to do it. If I was unable to find an advisor on my own, I couldn’t possibly find the courage to go to Bombay and be on my own. Needless to say, I got a little emotional and frustrated. However understandable it might be, I did go wrong. I lost my cool and cried and, if not shouted, used harsh tones with my response (though the words/language I used was above reprimand and, I think, quite subtle considering what I wanted to say.) I later proved her wrong by going to Bombay on my own. Niener Niener.
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By the time she finally rejected my project I only had two weeks until the ISPs started. I had to find a new project and fast. Two days later, I had a new project all lined up. I was going to do Reiki. I had a teacher all lined up, budget finished, everything ready to go. I would have been able to go through all three levels and achieved master level. This project was rejected as “not Indian enough.” It is true that it was developed by a Japanese man. However, he was a Buddhist (Buddhism came from India,) who, inspired by stories of Buddha’s special powers, journeyed to India and studied ancient Sanskrit texts from which he learned or rediscovered the art. Is it Japanese then? I would beg to differ. However, I conceded to her interpretation. I was frantic at this point. I went upstairs in tears and begged to be reassigned to the other admin. She took me in her office and talked to me. At this point, she offered to let me do my original project. I refused; I was too proud. This was immature. Another failing. I was under a lot of stress. This doesn’t make it excusable—these are just the circumstances. Finally, I found a project I was interested, my new advisor approved it. However, now they announced to me that I was to be put on academic probation. I would have to call in twice a week and talk to my advisor more than was required of the other students. I had to turn in and outline of my paper and dates were given to me for turning in drafts. I was told that I had been moody, hostile, had alienated my peers (I cannot now remember the wording, I have the paper somewhere. They tried to make me sign it, but I refused. Basically, I didn’t play well with others.) I had procrastinated and goofed off. I had taken time and resources away from the other students (I was in the admin’s offices no more than anyone else and far less than some.) The way it was worded made me sound like a basket case. It made me sound mentally unstable. I took it hope and showed it to my host mother. By this time, I think we had become friends. Or at least, at the time I did. They didn’t come to our good-bye dinner; I always felt like I failed them somehow. But they did have a new baby in the family, and hadn’t really seemed to want to hang out with me much, anyway. At any rate, when she read it she looked up, confused—“But, you’re not like this…I don’t understand…” She said. “Did you do something to make (the admin who I had so much trouble with) angry?” I told her that I seemed to have, but that, aside from expressing some frustration (with great restraint I might add) about my project, I didn’t know what I could have done as I had always tried my hardest to be “good.” She told me to stay strong and to smile, that I knew I wasn’t like that and it would be ok. I love her for this. I think about them often, but neither of them had email and I don’t know how to contact them now. Most of my grades came out ok. But, combined with the bad press from the admins and the academic probation, SIT told me I was not allowed to do the second semester in Fiji that I had planned. During my ISP, I met two wonderful girls who were living in my hotel and we became good friends. They helped me to be more courageous in going about the city and we had a lot of fun together.
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If I hadn’t have made those connections, there at the end when I was away from the program, I would have taken all of the blame for everything into myself. I would have believed that I didn’t make connections because there was something wrong with me—I must have been unlikable. I didn’t deal with the harassment well because I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t do anything/everything right because I wasn’t good enough, was deficient in some way. Instead, they helped me to see that it wasn’t me. That I was likable. That I could make connections and get along on my own. They helped me be strong. I will love them forever and be grateful to them. This is what happened to me, as evenhandedly and truthfully told as I can make it. I wish that SIT had been…well, better. I wish they had been able to help me talk through the issues I was having and find good strategies for solving them—rather than enforcing “independence” to the point of abandoning me. I didn’t need my hand held all the time—but I really just needed a friendly and non-judgmental ear. If I’d found even one friend in the program, things would have been different because we could have done this for each other. If they had actually spent five minutes listening and supporting rather than immediately judging me and pigeonholing me, things would have been different. If they hadn’t alienated me by labeling me “depressed” and shutting me down. If they had responded earlier. If they had used their resources more efficiently? If I had been able to verbalize better. If I hadn’t of been so afraid of being sent home…. But their attitude seemed very much, you have to do this completely on your own or we’ll judge you not up to it and send you home. Obviously, I WAS up to it—since I made it through, and traveled extensively on my own going all over S.E. Asia and China alone before going home. But a little help, understanding, and support could have been nice. So, was it my fault? Theirs? Was I unfit for the program? Was it just a bad match, a misunderstanding? I still do not have answers to this. I did the absolute best that I could with the resources I had. I did better than I have ever done. I was more mature, acted more wisely, spoke more thoughtfully than I have before, and I cannot help but be proud of myself and wish that they could have understood me a little more. I feel like if that had just happened, they would have supported me better. (Since they were decent people and all—it’s not like they were out to get me.) I can only hope this account will help.<br>