Coffee Hours, Cheesesteaks and Cherished Memories: My Temple Experience
Spending the fall semester of 2023 at Temple was one of the most exciting and special experiences of my life. I had not visited the U.S. before, which is why I experienced a rather big culture shock, which I honestly did not expect. So many things were so similar, I was used to having classes in English and writing papers in my second language. There were a lot of shops and stores, brands, and restaurants I was familiar with either from Germany or from movies and TV shows. Nevertheless, I was a bit lost for the first two months. To be fair, my living situation was a big part of it. At first, I lived with 5 sophomore boys who only talked about football, basketball, and baseball.
Philly itself is such an interesting city with a long history (long in terms of the United States), an important cultural scene, and some very cute neighborhoods. Temple is not in one of them, North Philly is kind of rough. Students there get used to the push notifications about shootings near campus, sometimes multiple times a week.
I think studying at Temple for a semester made my experience of the United States very realistic, nothing was romanticized. Temple is, compared to other universities in the area like UPenn or Penn State, less expensive when it comes to tuition. That is why there are a lot of first-generation students at Temple, many of them from Philadelphia, many of them Black or People of Color.
At the History Department, it was easy to get into conversation with other students, at lunches, coffee hours, and in class. Other students told me about the University’s administration, the way funding is organized, and how the United States university system works in general. It was news to me that alumni are often expected to donate large sums of money to their former university after spending tens of thousands of dollars on their education there. If they donate enough, perhaps a hallway or room will be named after them. I was at Temple a year after the graduate students went on a strike, protesting the contracts they were given. It was so interesting to see how university students unionize to fight for better conditions. While the university is also a highly political space in Germany, it is more about feminism, protesting right and far-right parties, and fighting for sustainability and climate justice. While Temple has clubs and activism like this too, being a master’s student or Ph.D. student at Temple, especially in the humanities, often comes with a whole other area of activism.
In my classes, people were often curious about life in Germany and university here. We talked a lot about healthcare, retirement, and access to abortion. Before, I thought I was highly aware of my privileges living in a country in the Global North. Talking to young people in the United States about the cost of my education, doctor’s appointments, and unemployment benefits changed the way I saw my life in Germany completely. While I also worked a half-time job back in Germany, some of the grad students were working full-time jobs to afford their education, rent, and food.
And this is of course not only the case in the academic sector. When I visited California, I had one Uber driver telling me she was working two jobs in addition to being an Uber driver, and if she got sick for two weeks, she and her daughter would be homeless.
But it would be too easy to just rant about the ways in which the educational, political, and social systems in the United States are broken, as I go back to Germany now and talk to my friends and family about the past six months.
This country also has a lot to offer, and I am so glad that I got to experience that. My classes at Temple were the most interesting and special classes I have taken in all my years in university. I have learned so much and felt so supported by my professors. There were a lot of amazing events during the time I was there, like a drag show, readings, Halloween parties, and Thanksgiving potlucks. At the beginning of the semester, I participated in a neighborhood walk around North Philly about Philadelphia’s Black history, especially during the civil rights movement. One thing the guide said stayed with me for my whole semester there: “We are guests in a community”. I do not think that I reflected my location as a white woman from Germany in North Philadelphia exhaustively. I was also a guest from Erfurt at Temple, but Temple made me feel like I was just as much a student there as anyone else. I tried to not complain too much about things that were different from Germany, as I did not want to take a “we-are-so-superior”-position. I’m not sure I did such a good job with that. But at least a hundred times I said: “Germany has its problems too”, especially referring to the current political climate and the poll ratings for the right-wing party AfD.
I leave Philadelphia with friendships that I know are going to be long-term, already excited to see some Temple folks at the conference in May in Erfurt. And I will definitely go back, drink overpriced coffee at Richie’s with an insane amount of sugar and syrup in it, hike in Wissahickon National Park grab a beer (although never an IPA) with my friends, and rant about public transportation since Septa is responsible for me being late 80% of the time.
Coffee Hours, Cheesesteaks and Cherished Memories: My Temple Experience by Kristina Becker
