Now my roommates's turn.
Tell me what are the culture shocks you faced specifically in student life in the US?
So, hello everyone from my new apartment.
You will get to see the move-in and apartment tour later on.
But first, the most important thing was,
the students who are coming in the fall of 2021 were requesting a lot
that when you enter college abroad,
what are the culture shocks, specially in student life
that you face.
And I have included around 10 culture shocks in this video.
You won't feel that these are shocks.
These are actually life changing values and habits
that I have inculcated in myself
due to which my lifestyle changed!
Starting with number one, WiFi!
Number one culture shock - WiFi.
WiFi is very fast here, no doubt.
Because when I was just coming here,
from India,
I had 5 Mbps maximum speed in my home.
And when Jio started, the max data was 1-2 Mbps.
And it was my dream that as soon as I will enter,
I thought that I will download stuff in seconds there,
I will torrent, I will get movies apps, whatever in seconds!
That is true. It is really fast.
The speed reaches upto 500 Mbps.
But the reality is, when I downloaded some movies on torrent here initially,
I had a notice in my dorm's WiFi
that I have torrented. And if you do it two times more, your WiFi will be terminated.
And I tried on Comcast as well.
(You know such habits take time to change..)
I tried again on Comcast's WiFi.
The warning came again. So the warning comes everywhere.
Because they track your ISP.
Anyways, I got to know that this is very wrong.
This is unethical. I stopped doing torrent.
Nowadays, I purchase everything starting from apps to movies.
I pay around 30 dollars per month for Adobe Photoshop creative cloud.
I also have these subscriptions for movies in Netflix, Amazon, Disney Plus et cetra.
And on the top of that,
if I use some app like..
..I use expensive apps like Final Cut Pro as well.
Which means.. I paid 200 dollars on a student discount while purchasing the Macbook.
So that's how I became an ethical user.
Number two, money. Dollars.
So just after coming, I noticed
that this country has so much money
that even the Domino's guy
delivers pizzas in a car!
You order anything anywhere, they deliver in a car.
And the specific culture shock in Atlanta was
the culturally acceptance.
You get to see more girls here,
in public transport as well as
as drivers.
So first of all there are more girls than boys here
That was a shock in itself.
And the biggest thing I felt was
that.. You take Uber, lift or even buses, trains
Everytime I see, it's a girl driver.
Because you can never see such things in New York,
neither in the whole of US nor in India...
It's actually like.. negligible in India.
But my point is that, we get to see these things less overally in the US.
So I was very happy to see culturally accepting
that girls are drivers and it was so fun to talk to them!
-Okay. -These two roommates are seen to be sitting in Harnoor Singh's video.
Now my roommates' turn.
Tell me what are the culture shocks you faced specifically in student life in the US?
-Will you go or should I go first? -You go.
The biggest culture shock for me was when I came to US and went to gym.
And I went to the changing room in the gym and saw that no one wears clothes there.
Everyone was butt naked and I felt so awkward.
I was like.. walking in the gym locker room like this.
That was the biggest culture shock when I came to the US.
-Bro they don’t wear anything in the locker room!
At least in India, they wear the underwear. But here, they don't wear anything.
I was walking like this all over the gym!
In fact, I agree to the same thing. I also shared this on the gym tour video.
I used to be shocked!
I used to change in my bathroom. I couldn't do it outside. Felt so awkward!
But, now it's Apoorv's turn.
Mine was.. this plagiarism scene over here.
I mean I did my research in India that, yes this happens so we should never do it.
But, since we were TA for 2,3 semesters, we would get to check on people
about how they are copying.
They use a software called Turnitin.
It keeps the record of around 2-3 years.
So it keeps the record, code of every student.
And not everyone knows this!
Usually the international students.. They aren't aware of this.
So... It hovers around their mind that they will copy from their seniors...
and no one will get to know.
But it's not like that. They get to know the name
of the person you copied from and the semester he's from.
-Oh.. -Let's say
I mean, now my semester is the fall of '21,
and if I have copied from a fall '20 student then his name will be captured as well!
(LAUGHTER)
Many students have got a zero like this...
I have been a TA as well. I have seen three such cases, I'll tell you.
One was Indian, he wrote "Jai Shree Ram" on the top
-Hahaha! -I had to give zero marks! (I'm sorry for it)
But I had to do so..
because he had copied from some student of the previous year.
They have got the record of three years.
So you cannot copy from anyone.
If you copy from a present student,
then both will get zero! And they will get warned later on.
But if you copy from a past student.. they won't do anything with him but,
you will get zero. So be careful!
Thank you!
And another culture shock is, here, Mamaearth products aren't available!
So we have to make sure to bring them from India.
And nowadays for my haircare routine, I am using
Mamaearth's Apple Cider hair mask
as well as Mamaearth's Rice Water hair mask.
And my favorite is Rice Water hair mask
because of the fact that it has
rice water, keratin and milk protein.
And we all know that India is the second largest producer of rice.
And I think it's high-time to start using it for hair growth as well!
So there's vitamin B, C and E in rice water.
And it makes the hair really strong.
And keratin and milk protein together
makes it strong from the roots
so that the hair loss reduces and it has happened so!
So finally you can see the difference
that my hair looks denser than before.
And you know about mamaearth that
their goal is to plant around 1 million trees
by 2025.
And they have completed the goal in quite an amount!
So if you use my coupon code today,
which is Harnoor2021, then you will get 20% discount
and if you use their app, then you may get extra discount as well.
So definitely check it out.
Now, coming back to money,
You may know that US is a rich country. It's one of the richest countries.
Eating out frequently is very common here.
Even when you go out.. Like here in a week, for students..
it's very common for them to get Starbucks everyday.
It's very common to eat out everyday..
It wasn't so common for me in India being from a middle class family.
We like used to eat out once in two weeks or less than that.
So why is it common here?
So let me explain through a term in economics which I studied as a child.
I don't know the exact term...
Let's just call it for now, Singh's principle of economics.
You can tell me in the comments what exactly it is called.
So this is actually a cycle.
A country becomes rich when it's employees spend lot of money as well.
As the employee is spending more money,
the employer has to pay more to compensate.
So this is why, you can see that
people with a basic salary of even 50-60k dollars,
if they are saving and spending wisely,
they can even afford Tesla
iPhone 12 Pro Max and even you know, an Apple watch
which we think of as luxury perks or products in India.
So it becomes easier.
And other than that, if you compare with India, India has a saving culture.
And if you compare, India has a saving culture.
In India, we believe that we should save money for the future.
We don't believe in spending.
That's why it becomes a difference.
It's tight now!
Oh! So you did the whole shebang.
Oh! What's shebang??
So.. shebang is like
if you say the whole shebang, you go through the whole process.
It's like you were only going to try out the jacket.
But you put on the shirt as well. You did the whole shebang!
So from this I remember
another culture shock that I experienced in my class and my school was
that there are so many phrases in the US. There are like so many vocab words..
You feel like your vocabulary is good in India.
But then you feel like, "I don't even know the meaning of these many words!"
But don't be shy, don't be afraid
to ask the other person what it means.
And even in the classes you get to hear so many accents
of professors teaching.
You may have professors with Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Italian accents..
It becomes difficult to understand that in the first two weeks.
So don't worry. Don't be nervous. Everyone faces this problem.
But once you get used to that professor's accent,
the class will be like a charm-up.
You will easily able to learn and also cover doubts as well from the professors
by going in his or her office hours.
So don't be shy and always feel free to ask questions.
Now next, most popular culture shock
was trusting strangers from different countries.
So as you know, when I came to the dorm in first year,
my roommates were from Japan and France.
I always used to worry whether I can trust them or not.
We had a special scene in our apartment as well.
There used to be a lot of weed which is illegal in Georgia.
I used to fear whether I should complain or not.
That's why I always worried about whether I should leave my passport home or keep it with me.
Because there was no locker in the dorm.
So the solution I did for that during the initial days was
that.. I always used to carry the passport in my bag which was risky.
Later, the solution I found was
since we had formed a trust, so I should leave it and trust them.
Every guy was an international student.
I just started to trust them
by talking to them.
And the fact of getting out of your comfort zone
and befriending international students made this possible.
Like, we get in a bubble...
We are like.. He's Indian! Let's be friends with him first.
But I just beat that bubble
so that I can you know, dissolve in the culture.
And another important culture shock,
When you do part-time jobs along with your classes,
since you make your schedule yourself of the classes and work that you have to do,
once you have that schedule, you find two types of students.
Number one set of students, who spend all their part-time income
in parties, night clubs, picking up girls
(or it might be the opposite as well)
And the number two set of students
that save to pay their rent or to pay their tuition.
Now, in this case, you have to decide,
whether you want to be category one or two.
The students in category two are those who believe in Freelanta, you know they go
for everything free that can be found on the campus.
And the category one,
considers Paid-lanta..
You have to decide int his situation what is good for you in terms of career
and which peer pressure or group you should go to.
Now, the last culture shock about tip culture.
In India, when we go out to eat at restaurants, we give the tip
but something I felt that was shocking here was
that, not just restaurants, may it be Uber Taxi rides like the one I took in New York,
or you go out anywhere for a haircut. Or in fact even when you go for shopping,
I went to a place for buying a blazer..
a guy helped me out. Everywhere, I have tipped people!
And here, out of kindness, 15% is mandatory tip.
18% if you are impressed by the service.
You give a tip here for sure because,
because I feel like, wherever you go, leave a good impression and by giving a good tip,
you can make that impression even better. So make sure you do that.
So that's it for today's video. Thank you so much for watching.
I hope this video adds little bit of value in your lives too.
And I will see you guys in the next one.
Goodbye!