Swapnil Sharma

Q1) Can you describe a situation in which you felt it necessary to be an ambassador for your India? For example, has there been a situation in which you needed to clarify erroneous stereotypes or assumptions about our home culture? How did you handle that situation?

Yes, there were some questions, but i guess it is always so. One incident that i can recall is that when i was being asked about the caste system and its effect on our society. So, i told my friend that indeed it is a part of our society and that it has done a lot of damage but the whole picture is not so gloomy, on the bright side a lot of improvement has happened since independence due to government's policy and maybe also due to improvement in literacy. Thus, this gives us hope that our society will continue to improve and one day we will get free of discrimination based on caste. This hope is reasonable as we have been able to eliminate several social evils in the past. So, instead of painting a rosy picture of our country in such situations i gave my honest opinions wherever they were due.

Did you experience a culture shock during the exchange? If yes, how did you deal with it?

The cultural shock was not severe, and it was mostly pleasant except a few things.

Q3)What are the major problems that you had to tackle while on exchange? Did they hinder your development or were they a part of your growth as an individual? (Keywords - Language, Accommodation, Transportation, Food, Staff, Profs, People in general etc.)

Language was a barrier because I had very elementary knowledge of french, although people were amiable and this has significantly changed my perspective about how we go on about living in society and acknowledging others through small gestures. Food was mainly non-veg but since I had adapted to it so i was pretty chill about that too. For me personally, adapting to the food habits was a better option than sticking to vegetarian diet which was scarce. This was in part due to my health concerns and in part of exploring the food which forms an integral part of cultures around the world.