Priyanka Bangard
Culture Shock
I remember my first day here. I remember sitting in a cab, being on top of Route 2, seeing the sign welcoming me to Massachusetts and marking my entry into Williamstown. And, I remember being seized by panicked terror. It was breathtakingly beautiful. There were uninterrupted forests as far as I could see, but, oh my god, there was absolutely nothing here for me to do. I was terrified that I had made the worst decision ever.
I was one of those irresponsible college hunters who hadn’t visited their new home for the next four years before arriving for orientation, had relied on catalogues, brochures, pictures, and had been grossly mistaken in her belief that Williams lay close to the ocean. I had read in a brochure that Williams students enjoyed lying on Chapin beach and well, I loved the beach, so I decided Williams was a good fit for me. The whole concept of steps equaling beach was alien to me.
Anyway, back to my first day here: At the top of that mountain, I looked around and couldn’t see or feel an ocean. Before I left LAX, I had known I would be arriving in a small town, but having lived only in and around huge cities — Bombay and Los Angeles — I imagined small towns to be places with only one mall and was shocked to be confronted by expanses of greenery and no signs of civilization as far as I could tell.
Once I made it down that mountain, bustling Spring Street offered some solace, but not really: One clothing store for a shopaholic like myself was unnatural and cruel. What was I going to do with myself?
Well, obviously, since I’m standing here, I was going to spend a significant amount of time studying. But, unable to rely on the malls, the boutiques, the movie theaters for entertainment, time consumption, and excuses for not really thinking or interacting, I was also pushed into engaging in intellectual discourse and creating meaningful interactions. And this encounter with open intellectual curiosity, spirited debate, and sharing of ideas, more so than the isolation, shoplessness, and smallness of this place, was most culturally shocking to me.
In India, I went to a good school and excelled there, but the medium of learning was rote memorization and my achievement was judged only by my recall and mastery of details. In the United States, I went to a far-from-good high school, that, apart from not challenging me and not providing a good education, actually discouraged intellectual curiosity and passionate engagement with any material. I was frequently thrown out of class, not for being unprepared or disruptive, but for asking too many questions.
I had been incredibly lucky to have a mother who, despite forces pushing for the dampening of my intellectual engagement, always nourished me with rich, evocative conversation and pushed me to pursue questions and seek answers even if none seemed available.
But, it was at Williams, for the first time, that I was truly surrounded in all aspects of my life by respect for intellectual curiosity, engagement, and discourse. I found it in the late night talks with entrymates and friends debating everything from boys, love and fashion to religion and politics. I found it in the classroom, where I was scared to speak at first, but noticed professors encouraging conversation, debate, questions, and the exchange of ideas. And, I found it outside the classroom, through the open doors of professors and advisors who never turned me away, who spent hours not only answering my existing questions, but challenging my ideas, pushing me to formulate more questions and refine my thoughts, pushing me to become not only a student, but also a thinker, not satisfied merely with what is already known, expected, or easy.
As I leave this sheltered community, where I have grown and matured so much through all of your contributions, challenges, patience, and spiritedness, I hope to carry with me this respect for and pursuit of intellectual curiosity and discourse, to continue these conversations we began here, and to take with me the values of this community.
My fellow classmates, I hope that as we step out of the bubble, we don’t simply assimilate and adopt the culture of wherever we go next, but that we succeed in integrating the values, lessons, and skills we have learned here with the demands of the varied communities and cultures we will settle into. I hope you won’t stop questioning, challenging, pushing, and bettering me.
June 3, 2007