NAME: Vanessa Gonzalez

OCCUPATION: Marketing and Admissions Director

If you had asked me who “I” am and what groups I belong to at the beginning of my college career, I could have answered you without a second thought: I’m Latina, I’m an American, I’m a first-generation college student, I’m studious, and I love to travel. But my experiences with intercultural communication—in college, and now in my job—really shook up these categories for me and taught me a great deal about communication with others.

My current job is with a college-preparatory high school in the United States that sponsors an International Academy. The position requires a combination of marketing and intercultural skills. I work to attract students from many different countries to the Academy, which is, as one might expect, culturally diverse. The on-campus housing provides a secure living environment for international students while giving them the opportunity to interact with others from all over the world. But not only international students benefit from this experience. The school also offers enriching classes and extracurricular activities for domestic students to help them to widen their cultural experiences. One program pairs international students with domestic students so that international students can become oriented to the school, and domestic students can learn more about another culture.

One of the most exciting parts of my job is the opportunity to travel internationally. Recently I visited schools in South Korea, Vietnam, and Thailand, where I participated in recruiting fairs and met with students and their families. As you might guess, I encountered several cultural variations. One that stood out to me was the different ways that students interact with their parents. In South Korea, students are expected to have a strong sense of independence at a relatively young age (compared to U.S. students). By their early teens, students often have their own flat or a private area of the family home. In this living situation, they are expected to take responsibility for their studies with little parental oversight. In Vietnam, on the other hand, students are more closely watched over by their parents, who are concerned with guiding not only their academic success but also their overall happiness. When meeting students of both these cultures, I kept this information in mind so that I knew whether to bring the parents fully into the recruitment discussions or if I should interact more directly with the student.

Other international experiences have shown me how to navigate cultural variations that I may not expect. For example, while studying abroad in India in college, I found myself at a hotel where the hot water for the showers wasn’t working. When I called down to the front desk, the hotel manager assured me that he would address the issue. Still, several trips down to the front desk later, the water remained cold! It finally dawned on me that his quiet gestures indicating “yes” actually meant “no”: “No, there will not be any hot water today.” It was up to me—the listener—to decode all of the contextual cues that pointed to this response, despite my own upbringing in a low-context culture (where the manager would likely have said: “Our hot water heater is broken but will be fixed by 6 A.M. tomorrow”).

At the International Academy, I similarly need to be sensitive and help students from high-and low-context cultures adapt (especially high-context cultural students, who are not always used to responding to blunt questions). Our teachers also need to adapt their methods to be sure their students understand them. It’s incredible to watch such a diverse group grow comfortable with their surrounding and with their fellow students, picking up new ways to communicate and learn.