Sitting in my speech class last year I noticed something that was different from any class I was taking at the time or any other time. It was not the teacher or her teaching style. I observed the difference when I looked around the classroom at my peers. The students in my class were very diverse. The class was made up of freshmen through seniors and also three or four middle-aged persons. Yet, that was not the diversity that I found so differentiating it was that most of the freshmen through seniors were foreign exchange students. Those students came from countries such as Malaysia, China, Russia, and Asia. I had never really engaged in much conversation with a person from a foreign country, but this was speech class so communication with my peers was a must. I admit before I had a chance to talk to the exchange students I was guilty of a common practice. I was guilty of stereotyping. In my mind I had already assumed that the exchange students probably did not speak or understand our language very well and were going to be very shy towards their American peers. A couple of days into the class it turned out that my stereotype assumptions were not entirely true. As most stereotypes tend to be.
             The idea that never stuck me during that class was "As much as I stereotyped the foreign exchange students against my American culture, were the foreign exchange students stereotyping the American students against their own culture?" I am almost positive most of the foreign exchange students had stereotypes about American students before and during their exchange. Stereotyping is a very natural action especially when it is about people from another country with completely different backgrounds. It was hard for me to imagine what stereotypes foreigners would have of Americans; I just never gave it much thought. Though, now I know for a fact there are many stereotypes of Americans that evolve from different countries. Many...