Meerabelle Jesuthasan | Inside out

You Speak English? | For some, life might just be a long series of gentrified bubbles.

By Meerabelle Jesuthasan 02/28/16 9:46pm

Imagine coming here from a country where you, a well-off expat, were used to a lifestyle that was pretty exorbitant and exceptional by most standards. Chances are you were living a world away from the typical local life. Locals went to different schools, sometimes spoke a different language and could tell instinctively that you were not one of them. Not just because you were of a different race, but also because of the way you carried yourself — loud and large, Western-sounding and oblivious to the norm.

And now here you are at Penn, in a microcosm that functions in essentially the exact same way.

And given the fact that you are now here, chances are the rest of your path will look much the same.

To many people, particularly international students, Penn might just be one in a lifelong series of gentrified bubbles.

Oftentimes, the college experience can be completely unattached from the place we live in. This narrative centers on self-discovery and evolution, which is certainly valuable. However, this risks limiting our experience to campus, turning them away from our city and making Philadelphia a pit stop on the way to a glamorous job in New York.

Likewise, being an expat student often comes with the knowledge that home is a transient state. You aren’t exactly from the country you live in. The country you’re in is the background, not the story.

In his inauguration in 2011, former Mayor Nutter commented on this trend, stating “We must not become two cities.” He wasn’t just talking about University City, but it strongly applies to the experience of most students. The phrase is reflected distortedly in Singapore, a country made up of almost a third of non-residents, most of whom are working. During most of my time there I was a part of the teen expat culture, attending an international school and enjoying a glossy version of Singapore. That version is markedly different to the experience of a local teenager, who must navigate Singapore’s notoriously competitive education system. Beyond that, other expats and I just wouldn’t have the same perception of what makes up Singaporean culture.

The irony in all of this is that we place a lot of value on having diversity of experience. We know that something is lost by staying inside the infamous bubble, always referred to as something we need to transcend. Among other things, it’s seen as a barrier to culture and experience. No wonder, then, that there’s a certain admiration reserved for people who have lived in several countries and can describe their life as a journey through seemingly exotic scenery. But often, the expat experience doesn’t represent a local one at all.

That isn’t to say that leaving the bubble is impossible. At Penn, we often express the desire to explore Philadelphia. After a while though, the motivation seems to drain away. There’s a sense of effort implied in this kind of exploration. To get to know a place requires initiative to go out of one’s way, leave campus and, crucially, to free up a few hours. That’s a big issue for many students, which is insane — the fact that our lives are so consumed by the duty of constructing a future that we can’t even get to know the place we live in now. When your life is constantly turned to bigger things, the culture of where you are right now isn’t that important.

The truth is that as the hours in our day become scarcer, being able to leave the bubble for no other reason than to explore turns into a luxury. Belonging to a place that isn’t our final destination is optional.

The problem with this mentality is where it places us vis-a-vis the community. We are assumed to be passive and external, almost adversarial. As Penn students, it’s easy to feel like outsiders because Penn itself might appear to be an outsider, like a white-collar fortress in a messy little city, although it plays a big role in Philadelphia. But these shouldn’t limit our interactions with local life.

Philadelphia will remain in our pasts no matter where we end up, just like all the other places we’ve lived in, whether it was one town or 20 countries. These places should change us and perhaps, by embracing them a little more, we should change them. The Philadelphia we remember shouldn’t be just another background. It is more than a background, and we are more than tourists.

MEERABELLE JESUTHASAN is a College freshman from Singapore, studying English and cognitive science. Her email address is jesum@ sas.upenn.edu. “You Speak English?” usually appears every other Monday.

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