What do you do? and other annoyances

A few weeks before we left New York, I met up with a British friend of mine who was visiting from the UK. Almost the first thing she said to me as we sat down for coffee was “How can you live in this city full of self-centred people?” She went on to explain that she’d met twenty or thirty Americans in the last few days and not one of them had asked what she did. I laughed, because I used to feel exactly the same way when I first moved to the US.

I felt confused and frustrated by the American version of social interaction, in which one is expected to just start talking about whatever seems interesting at the time, rather than waiting to be asked a string of standard and predictable questions. I tended to sit silently through parties, waiting to be asked about myself and then leaving at the end of the night feeling dejected and wondering why nobody was interested enough to even ask what I did. It took me years to adjust to this particular cultural difference and to develop the spontaneity and courage required to converse the American way; I’m still not sure if I’m quite there, but these days I find I much prefer it.

Since we’ve been in the UK I’ve been doing my best to dodge what now feels like an oppressive torrent of “What do you do?” “What do you do?” “What do you do?” (And not just because I don’t really have an answer at the moment!) To start every initial conversation with that question now seems not only boring but also presumptuous and sort of invasive, possibly as much so as “Are you married?” and “Do you have children?” (both of which I should probably prepare myself to answer multiple times once we get to Asia!) While it may sound cheesy to say so, having the freedom to choose what to tell people about yourself is just one of the things I appreciate about living in New York.

We’ve also been pondering the differences between British and American college towns, in response to being overwhelmed by the rubbishness of pubs in St.Andrews! Why is it that even the most isolated college towns in the US have at least a couple of punk rock/queer/”alternative” bars, while British college towns just have the same slick, pseudo-classy chains that you’d find all over the country, plus a few local old man pubs? Considering how relatively cosmopolitan St.Andrews is for its size, it should be surprising but probably isn’t to most Brits. We came up with various unconvincing theories as to why this is, from “because Americans have to travel further to get to college towns” and “because Americans are more likely to stay in college towns after they graduate” (I’m not even sure if that’s true) to the even vaguer “probably the same reason that New York is better than London, whatever that is.”

I’m going to try not to be this intolerant throughout the whole trip!