Teaching Egyptians

Many of you have asked what it is like teaching at American University Cairo (AUC)and whether I have noted any cross-cultural differences between my NC State Students and my AUC students. I think I can best answer this by giving you a snapshot of my first assignment. My AUC students were asked to tell me their major/minor, what year they were in school (freshman, sophomore, etc), why they are taking Intro to Psychology, their hobbies/interests, and anything else about themselves that they though I should know. Here is what a few of them said...I think it gives a sense of who they are as people and what incredible personal histories must have led them to the honor of higher education. As you can tell, I am very fond of them already...they are strikingly honest, very personable, and occasionally totally hilarious! Please cut them some slack on the English. For many of them, English is a third or fourth language. Each paragraph is a different student:
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I, like most people have many obsessions and interests; for instance for leisure I enjoy traveling, camping in the desert, listening to music, dancing, beaches and islands, and watching TV shows especially the genre drama. I believe I have a short concentration span this is why I took the class Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday (as opposed to Monday/Wednesday) as the classes are shorter

My main hobbies are simply sport! I love playing and watching all sports, but my favourite sport is football (soccer to Americans!), and have been playing it all my life, as well as playing for a team for the past few years. I don’t have any particular hobbies that I continually do, other then sport and surfing the internet, as my hobbies change from time to time, but the one thing I always try to do is have a good time! So that usually involves going out with my friends on a regular basis doing anything we find fun! On the other hand I find reading boring, and only do it when I have to for college work.

I hope that I will learn to be able to know things that my enemies would hide of me. Also, I hope to learn when are people lying to me and when are they saying the truth.

I can’t say that I have any specific interests or hobbies, I’m not an artistic person, I pretty much chose a major just for a good career because I don’t really have a passion for a specific topic.

The only method that does not work with me when studying is memorization. I have experience with that, as studying for (name deleted to protect confidentiality) exams is based on memorizing and I always had a problem with that, so ultimately the subjects I did well in were those no memorization was needed, like maths and statistics

For a long period, one of my dreams was to become a psychiatrist and have my own clinic in the future and be able to delve in it. But I had never really been interested in medicine as a college. As a child and growing up, I didn’t know that I had to join medical school from the very beginning to be able to reach my former ultimate dream. Thus, I could say that joining this class is making up for my dream of learning what had intrigued me for so long…. Taking this course is really exciting for me and I just hope to be as good at it as I’ve always dreamt.
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I am very honored indeed to have been given this challenge.....It appears that expectations for Psychology 101 are quite high!

:)

-Ashley