For my first blog post, I could think of no one better to interview than my old friend Nicolas “Nico” Ramos Hermoso. I got to know Nico from my days at Rustburg High School, where he was a foreign exchange student, and we were also teammates on the soccer field. He hails from Madrid, Spain and is currently a college student just like me, while I am at Longwood University in the small town of Farmville, Virginia. Nico attends la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and is looking studying business law.
Over the course of our conversation, I found it intriguing how much students in Spain, according to Nico, actually study. He said that during the week and weekends students will mostly spend their time studying, while on Friday’s students will be more like to hang out amongst each other, go to clubs, or just find things to do together.
“In the weekends we organize ourselves, maybe on Friday we study, we hang out, we party, or whatever. Here in Spain, you have to be 18 to go to a club so maybe on Fridays, we go to a club or something like that,” said Hermoso. “But then on the weekend and the rest of the week, we usually spend our time studying.”
Another thing I found interesting was that in Spain there are fewer presentations and more memorization. I asked Nico about the differences in schooling in the two countries since he did live in Virginia for almost one year and has been in the Spanish schooling system his whole life.
“School in the United States is way more practical than here (in Spain). Here we have just study, memorize the stuff. In the United States, you have to study not that much, you do presentations, powerpoints, and stuff from other people,” said Hermoso. “Here in Spain, we mainly study and do tests.”
I did after our conversation find out that students my age do not work during their schooling years. Many times here in America you will find a student who works and also has to balance school, however in Spain that is the opposite.
“Here in Espain, people usually don’t start working until they finish college. Because usually, you don’t have time for that part-time job, because of the time you are not at school, or at college, you are studying for college,” said Hermoso. “You don’t have time for an actual job.”
After hearing things like this I cannot help but think about the Differences-Similarities Dialectic. We as a class went over different dialectics while studying the article by Martin, Nakayama, and Flores titled “A Dialectic Approach to Intercultural Communication.”This dialectic explains that we have similarities but we also have differences. We can either embrace these similarities and differences or let them draw us apart.
Martin, Flores, and Nakayama Reading
Another difference that I noticed in Spanish culture is that sports and school have no link. Here in America athletics are a big deal and something we pride ourselves on, but in Spain this is different.
“Here in Espain sports and school are not that related, and they are not related at all in college,” said Hermoso. “At school, you only study they kind of don’t care how good you are at your sport.”
For a person who is in American culture, I think that we can take a few things from this: I feel that we should try to transform our culture into the one of Spain by having a higher emphasis on hitting the books and educating ourselves, also I think that flashy things like sports should be of lower importance than a student’s
academic performance, which should be on the top of the importance list in my mind.
I really had a great time getting to catch up with Nico, and it was even better to learn a little bit more of what life in Spain, from the perspective of someone who also has experience of living in the United States! I hope to maybe FaceTime him again soon and learn even more information, possibly even visit.