kids in america

There are very few times that we can get an idea about what it is like to view the United States from another culture. For me, these last three weeks have been exactly that - a chance to take a critical look at my country and learn about others. Time Out magazine is a youth magazine published in London. In its latest issue it had an article addressed to British students who are thinking about studying abroad in America. I was so shocked by the reality of the article that I wanted to share it on my blog.

Please take the time to read this, as I know you will enjoy it.



KIDS IN AMERICA
by Tom Lamont


Many universities offer the chance to spend a year in America. Do it, says Tom Lamont, but be ready for a difference in attitude. Towards race? Money? No: booze.

Academic life certainly is different in America. Campuses, as self contained as any Center Parcs, are like miniature cities, with their own road networks, their own food sponsors… even their own police forces. Students are hugely competitive: academic progress is charted to the exactness of two decimal places. Everyone says ‘dude’ a lot – as a welcome, a title, an endearment and an admonishment. And the attitude toward drinking? You might find it a little strange.

‘Dude. I drank ten beers, eight shots and a glass of wine. Now pass me the water, I don’t want a hangover in the morning.’ Not an attitude towards the sauce to match that of their British counterpart. It might not seem an important difference – people study abroad to do more than get jagged – but the culture discord can lead to a pretty odd stay if you enjoy the occasional sip.

The first thing to remember is that, in America, you can only legally consume alcohol once you’re 21 (three years after buying your first handgun in Florida, six years after receiving a drivers licence in South Dakota, seven years after getting married in Texas.) The law is rigorously enforced – the most unassuming bars will have someone checking ID’s at the door – and can come as an enormous shock to the Brit who’s been “legal” for a while.

Boozing remains an under the table pursuit until students are well into their third year.
The habit of charting alcohol consumption with comprehensive, to the minute precision is probably the most obvious example of this: American students will happily keep you apprised, throughout an evening , of exactly how many cans, bottles, shots and swigs they have ingested…long after the ability to count should have been lost.

There’s little sense that drinking is for fun. Over here, the Sunday tabs wait all week to hand-wring over the binge-drinking epidemic gripping the nation’s youth. But the moral furore ignores the fact that the British student has also mastered that other, more careful, practice: the art of casual boozing. There’s the afternoon pint. The cheeky lunchtime half. If you know the right pubs, the pre-exam morning tankard. Drinking to the British student is a leisure activity. It is a pleasure.

To the American Student it is a sport. And a sport they must win. Hence their endurance style methods, devised to get as much alcohol into the body as possible without tasting it. ‘Shotgunning’ requires cutting a hold in the base of a beer can to aid swift all-in-one consumption. (The cans, by the way, are the 330ml, Coke sized sort – cute when compared to our hulking juggernauts.) The “beer bong” is a long, funnelled tube, held vertically to deliver two or three pints direct to the stomach. The “keg stand” sees an individual hoisted upside down over a keg of beer, fighting gravity to neck as much pressurised beer as possible, while contemporaries roar that immortal chorus “Chug!”

The spirit is light hearted, yes, but there’s something rather desperate and overly contrived about it all.

This doesn’t fully reveal itself until the end of an evening, when, after the frolics are over, you might see the same people – the shotgunners, the keg standers, the ones who have kept you tirelessly updated on their drinking progress – line up to sup from a bottle of water, careful to avoid a hangover in the morning. This boozing-by-numbers; arranged by little spontaneity, as one of many pursuits to make time for in a college in a week. It makes for eerily mature conclusions to drinking sessions that have been anything but.

There is a serious side to the difference in mentality, too. Without any kind of gentile introduction to booze – afforded, as it is in Europe, throughout the formative years – many American freshers arrive at college with virgin gullets, discover a sudden access to drink…and wake up in groups in the emergency room. Fraternity houses are regularly suspended or closed down by their universities after the plunge of a drunken innocent from the third floor balcony, or the belated discovery of a dead fresher beneath a pile of plastic cups. Many universities have their own police units, driven – through an almost utter lack of serious on campus crime – to patrol the quiet collegiate roads, ticketing minors who weren’t quick enough to toss their beers. An hour in handcuffs and a hundred buck fine, all for the quiet sip of a beer? Not unheard of.

It all seems unnecessarily straight-faced at times, bypassing the spirited, communal side of drinking. You may find yourself the bemused soul in the corner of a room , longing to enjoy a casual drink without chalking up figures after every sip. Our advice? Don’t let it put you off going… just don’t get caught raising your eyebrows too often.

And keep this happy though in mind: there is a welcoming pub in yonder isle beyond the sea, with ale and McCoys aplenty; a landlord who couldn’t care less about your ID; and a crowd who are too busy counting shrapnel from the Millionaire machine to bother about the number of glasses they’ve held. Dude, it’s the way it should be.