Third Culture Kids, or TCKs, are students who were raised in a culture outside of their parents’ culture for a significant part of their childhood. Born in one country and raised in another, TCKs grow up living in a country outside that of their nationality and find it difficult to classify themselves as only one culture. Many TCKs move often and have lived in several different countries. Other people have a hard time with TCKs too, they said, because TCKs aren't easy to categorize. Rica Revillo, a sophomore majoring in business management, is a Third Culture Kid who was born in the Philippines but has also lived in Japan, Ohio, and Singapore. For her, home isn’t a place. It is a people. She usually tells people the Philippines is her home because her extended family lives there. However, Revillo doesn’t think it will stay that way for long. She said, “A lot of my family members are going to move somewhere else outside of the Philippines—California, Salt Lake. So I feel like in the future I won’t call Philippines home anymore once everyone moves out.” Sophomore Phoebe Wardle, a sophomore majoring in hospitality & tourism management, said she is from Shanghai. Wardle speaks fluent Mandarin and English and has lived in Shanghai her entire life, even though her family is American and she was born in Minnesota. Wardle said she only lived in the Midwestern state for three months and feels no ties there. “All I know about it is the Mall of America,” she said with a laugh. Wardle said she feels like she didn’t get the “normal American teenager” experience like she’s seen in movies, but she is grateful she had the chance to experience so many different cultures. Wardle described Shanghai as a melting pot of European, American, and Asian communities, and said by living there, she’s become more open-minded and accepting of different cultures. She explained, “I feel like I have a combination of cultures. I identify with both. I can’t identify with just one.” Megan Sanders, a sophomore majoring in social work, has spent the last 12 years living in Dubai, and was born in Utah but has also lived in Ohio and Japan. She said one of the reasons she chose BYUH is she is used to living in places with lots of diversity. “I’ve never been around a lot of white people… There’s just so many different cultures and races [in Dubai.] My school was an international school and it had over 60 different nationalities in it.” Most people are confused by the TCK experience. Sanders explained, “It’s annoying when people ask you where you’re from and you’re like, ‘I’m from Dubai,’ and they’re like, ‘No you’re not. You’re American.’ No one knows what a TCK is. No one knows how to identify with them.” Revillo added, “The majority of the population are people who’ve only been raised in one country. So when teachers ask questions like, ‘Why is your English so good?’ they’re like, ‘What [nationality] are you really?’” Defining a nationality is tricky. Third Culture Kids often find it difficult to feel like they belong in the country they have citizenship in because they don’t live in that country. They can also feel like outsiders in the nation where they live. For example, Wardle said it was hard to feel accepted by the Chinese people because she is white. “If you don’t speak Chinese, they’ll be kind of rude about it, and then for you to speak Chinese in China it’s like, ‘This girl’s amazing!’” Revillo said the greatest challenge is saying goodbye to so many close friends. For TCKs, saying goodbye as they move from place to place and letting go becomes routine. Revillo explained, “You make really strong relationships with people from around the world, but I don’t think a person can ever get used to saying goodbye to a country, a place where they lived in and have made friends. I thought it was crazy hard.” Sanders added knowing so many people allows her to be open to new ideas, concepts and cultures, more so than people who have lived in the same place their whole lives. “We have a different view than most would, and we’ve witnessed and had firsthand experiences with people. “And sometimes it makes me so sad because people are like ‘Muslim. Terrorist,’ and I’m like, ‘No, my school was mostly Muslim and I had best friends who were Muslim.’” Revillo said the most important thing she has learned from living in so many different places is respect. Although those who come to BYUH straight from their home countries may experience some culture shock and have a hard time understanding people from other cultures, Revillo and TCKs don’t: “For me it’s like, ‘Oh well, that’s their culture.’ I went to international schools my whole life. [TCKs] know what’s different, so I’m used to people having different mannerisms.” All three of the above-mentioned TCKs found that, in moving to Hawaii, there were little things about the new culture and setting they found strange. Sanders said, “It’s hard to explain, but in Dubai, light switches are different, doorknobs are different, every single thing is different.” Wardle laughed, “The coins still mess me up. It’s terrible. In China there’s only two coins. Whereas here in the States, they’re like, ‘This is a dime.’ Why do they have different names for them? Why can’t you just say 10?’”Uploaded May 6, 2016
Writer: Samantha Daynes
