1. When you write colour with a u or realise with an s and your TF marks them as spelling mistakes – or your laptop autocorrects to color and realize and you feel like a traitor
2. When they ask you why you can speak English
3. When you seriously propose a temporary post-college marriage to one of your friends so you can get a green card, and they laugh as if you’re joking 🙁
4. When you don’t know how to pronounce some words like aluminum or salmon (or words that you’ve only ever read and never said out loud before)
5. When you try to figure out the values of American coins in the counter in supermarkets and then give up and hand over your credit card
6. When you don’t get American cultural reference jokes so you just laugh along awkwardly in lectures
7. When you’re still wearing sundresses in November because the trunk with your winter clothes is stuck in Kentucky somewhere
8. When professors in lecture are like “we dropped the atomic bomb,” and you’re like not “we,” not all of us are American
9. When they think you’re so exotic and cultured, but little do they know you grew up on Hannah Montana reruns
10. When you forget which side of the road cars drive on and almost get hit jaywalking
11. When people’s names are insults in your language
Edited by Cheryl Xiang and Diane Jiang