Culture Shock: Separating Fact from Fiction
Culture shock! A lot has been said about it. The question is: is it real or is it just a myth?
Let’s imagine for a minute that you are a nurse, ready and willing to embark on a journey halfway around the world. Isn’t that an exciting prospect? All of your dreams, hopes, and desires are finally coming to fruition.
You boarded your plane and then arrived at the land of milk and honey. It’s early Spring, so there is that unfamiliar coolness in the air. You blew your breath through your mouth and you are tickled pink to see a fog forming. All is well. In fact, everything is perfect…or so you thought!
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A Dose of Reality
Traveling to another country brings with it a lot of mixed emotions: excitement, overwhelming joy, and a little pinch of being torn inside for leaving family and friends behind. It is a dizzying prospect to finally be starting on that American (or European) dream, which admittedly was what I had before!
The very next morning you woke up, you finally realized that this was the very first full day of you living in America. Oh, wait, you have to buy your rice and your rice cooker at your local supermarket. After all, you can take a Filipino out of the Philippines but you cannot take the rice out of the Filipino’s diet.
In the words of my husband: “if rice ceases to exist in the world, the Asian race will cease to exist as well!”
He says it half-jokingly, but there is some hint of truth in it.
Okay, back to your shopping spree… Aside from rice and rice cooker, you also got yourself some necessary toiletries, some instant ramen (because who doesn’t eat it when pressed for time?), and a couple more kitchen essentials. At the cashier, you are so shocked to find out that your $100 fizzled out just like that. Of course, you will convert it to the Philippine peso (all of us did this, believe me). You looked at your cart and shook your head in disbelief! “My 5,000 pesos was only good for ramen and rice?”
Welcome to your new life, my dear. If in case no one told you, the American Dream is not all roses and butterflies!
The Good
“I am tough,” you confidently told yourself. “I am a nurse who has sacrificed so much just to bow out because of a small inconvenience. So things are expensive, there is nothing I can do about that. Once I start earning good money, it shouldn’t matter anymore.”
You are correct! Nurses are highly respected here. Our profession ranks as the most trusted profession in the last 20 years. Modesty aside, we affect positive changes in the lives of the people whom we cared and continue to care for. And we are handsomely compensated for that!
The Place of the Filipino Nurses in the American Healthcare System
Healthcare in America employs 2.8 million immigrant workers. Out of that, 143,000 are Filipino nurses, making us the most foreign-educated nurses group in the country. In simpler terms, one out of every 20 nurses in America is a Filipino.
Professor Ceniza Choy identified the reason why Filipino nurses are in demand in the United States in her book Empire of Care: Nursing and Migration in Filipino American History. An expert in ethnic studies, she concluded that we are trained in an Americanized curriculum and are fluent in English.
Most Filipino nurses who have worked or are currently working will assure you that patients usually have high regard and respect for us. We have that nurturing nature innate within us. We treat everyone as if they are our own parents or grandparents. Because we are great team players, we are favorites to be given responsibilities to. Depending on how you may look at it, the fact is: we don’t know how to say NO!
The Bad
Maybe part of being colonized by so many cultures is the reason why we are shy.
You feel that since you are new, you have to be a good follower and say “yes” all the time. The unit is short. Can you work overtime? They ask you. “Sure,” you said. A fellow nurse needs to take the weekend off because her family has a gathering she couldn’t miss? You are like: “okay, have fun!”
Are you really doing them a favor or yourself a disservice? Our culture molded us early on to be respectful and not to be a disappointment to our elders (or leaders). Thus, in effect, you didn’t realize that you are now a full-fledged “yes-man” or “yes-woman.” You have officially become the go-to person in case the unit needs someone to be “flexible” and accommodating.
In contrast, you noticed that your co-workers are very affront when they say “no.” They just don’t say it. They really mean it. For them, no means NO!
You now start to wonder to yourself why are you just taking this sitting down.
You don’t know how to advocate for yourself, that is why!
No, it’s just not you. For us, being assertive is equal to being aggressive. We don’t know how to differentiate the two. Sad, right?
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What Accent?
Aside from our fear of coming across as aggressive, you’d rather stay silent than be called out for your accent when you speak.
If we really analyze things carefully, English has been our method of instruction since kindergarten. Our television channels are inundated with American shows.
I don’t know about you, but I grew up watching Sesame Street. My mental picture of America is not the same as others – the big cities and tall skyscrapers, I mean. For me, it’s the wide-open fields and fresh cow’s milk because that was what I saw on TV before.
Between watching the TV (and now Netflix) and our formal English classes in school, you may want to believe that you speak English the way native speakers do. Heck, you even passed the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) and Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). How many more English nuances can you learn?
The sad truth though is some people will still have something to say about it. There may or may not be malicious intent. Nevertheless, you are a true-blue sensitive Filipino, so you allowed that to get to you.
I wish I could say that I was thick-skinned about it, but I was not. Admittedly, I did get offended when someone asked me where I learned my English. That will be a story in itself we can talk about sometime soon.
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Financial Culture Shock
Remind me again how much your employer promised to pay you? Did you say $2000 per month? That is a lot of money, or so you thought!
Honestly speaking, I think all Filipinos have been born with automatic calculators in our heads. We are very mathematically quick in converting our foreign salary into Philippine pesos. If we hear of a dollar amount, we are quick to multiply it by 50, regardless of whether the exchange rate is $1 to PHP 47.80.
So, you are absolutely thrilled that you are actually learning PHP100,000/month. You thought to yourself: “I could die as a nurse in the Philippines and never make half of this kind of money per month in all of my career!” You momentarily forgot about your supermarket story – that you also spend dollars here. In short, you must also multiply your expenses by 50, if you want to play that game.
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Not a Debbie Downer
Reading these all, you might think to yourself: “how is this supposed to encourage me to come to America?”
No, I am not being a Debbie Downer or a pessimist here. The goal of this post is to provide you with realistic expectations.” Like anywhere else, there are myriads of reasons and situations one faces when leaving his or her comfort zone. I don’t know about you, but I would rather know what I am getting myself into the good, the bad, and yes, even the ugly!
I didn’t have anyone tell me about the realities of life when I first came here. For me and many of my friends, the culture shock was real! We made some not so wise decisions because of a lack of guidance. Honestly speaking, I wouldn’t wish anyone to go through the same challenging experiences we had when we were just starting out.
If I can help just one person avoid the same heartbreaks we had in the past, then I will consider my work done!
For you who are on the edge of reaching your immigration dreams, do you even think of culture shock and how it may affect you? Does knowing other people’s stories help prepare you a little bit better before stepping on that plane? Please share your comments below.
