R1O9B9E2RT 2009-04-09 15:22:14

"Are these stereotypes correct, or it's all just bollocks?"

Stereotypes? Don't confuse this with facts... :)
Kommst du aus Oesterreich oder hältst du dich nur grade da auf? Du hast Russisch als erste Sprache angegeben = bist du russisch?

I-smel 2009-04-09 15:34:21

Are most houses in America made without bricks?

Summy010 2009-04-09 15:37:26

I'm Canadian so I can't answer this.

But, my girlfriend lives across the border and attends University for Architecture. So I can answer #4.

Just to run down a few numbers from the past year...
Tuition - in the $5,000 range.
Supplies - in the $8,000 range.
Parking - $650 per semester (And the parking still sucks, they have to cross the street, kinda hard when you carry a 25lb, 11.4kg, architecture model)
Books - $2,000 range.
Then there is gas. She lives 30 minutes from the school, and when they have to go on a field trip for various purposes, does the school take them there? Nah, they have to do that on their own. So god only knows how much gas is. If they have to travel out of the state, they have to pay for that as well. They usually are put into hostels during these trips. Very shitty ones, each time my gf has checked into an actual hotel because the hostels don't even have a locking door, and the surrounding neighbourhood has been ghetto-level at best. Just ASKING to get raped, shot, items stolen, etc.

Oh, and this is a 6 year program. And the absolute best part is, she's having a hard time getting a loan from a bank, since the economy is in such a god awful condition. There's barely any scholarshps she can apply to (4.0 GPA btw), because a lot have been stopped the past year. The school itself has atleast 5 other scholarships available to students in other programs, 1 for architecture students. Life is grand in America!

Kenney 2009-04-09 15:53:48

If Americans go on vacation, they visit their own country.

leob123 2009-04-09 15:57:34

1) sometimes
2) only for the mentally retarded and illigal immigrants
3) half the time
4) most of the time for those not of the higher class
5) only people who dont even bother to think of other countries
6) only true americans and not immigrants
7) i dont really know what a kg is compared to a pound but im going to say yes, mostly
8) only if they come from a country that denies rights like freedom of speech
9) most americans slack off during school and dont bother to remember anything afterwards
10) yes and they also like to bitch about the expensive economy
11) true
a) buy the house
b) id assume 15 months if you spend only 1500 US dollers on it and everything isnt interrupted by a random thing such as robbery, lost transaction, bailing yourself out of jail after trying to wrestle a bear
c) id assume 1 additional year to the 15 months making it a total of 2 years 5 months
age) 15
amazingly most of those stereotypes are correct more or less so

RainbowRiderAlpha 2009-04-09 16:02:15

1. No American flag, they aren't always in debt, apartments are usually in cities; 'condominiums' are the outer city equivalent

2. I would assume so

3. true for most

4. no, but if a family has a history if not going to a university (called 'college' here) then the student will most likely be content with a high school diploma. There are many colleges around the country that offer a ridiculous amount of scholarship opportunities that help. On the other hand, some students do get caught up in student loans and get themselves in trouble with debt

5. hell no

6. Not true at all. I'm guessing you're talking about the average white American. America is a place of mixed races/cultures with MANY languages. The U.S. has no official language, which may seem ridiculous in some places, but where I am people know how to speak Spanish, and some only know how to speak their native language (Arabic, Spanish, Indian language #378, German, etc.). The average American going to school has to take four years of a foreign language (in most places)

7. The number of obese people in this country is ridiculous

8. Leaving a country would definitely make a person more open minded and less conservative. HOWEVER, you're study assumes that Obama was the 'right' candidate and McCain was the 'wrong' one. Here in the U.S., candidates make complete lies to get your vote and never follow their promises. So far, Obama has said one thing and has done the complete opposite on many occasions. I'm not saying McCain would have done any better, though.

9. We can convert g to kg, but no one knows how to convert Fahrenheit to Celsius. If I was traveling to Europe and you told me it would be around 30 degrees Celsius, I would have no idea how to pack.

10. I'm not to sure about the majority on this one, but I'm going to assume the answer is yes

11. I feel like I've spent too much time on this and honestly don't feel like doing a math problem on my Spring break from school, but I have a 3.86 GPA in school and an A in math, so I think I could do this problem. The assumption that most Americans can't do simple math would be incorrect for the majority, but there ARE a large number of Americans that would be completely baffled by your problem.

The problem with answering your questions to fit the majority of the United States is that there are so many diverse people. I think your assumptions might fit the people who live in places like Arizona or Mississippi (the dumbest states), but if you go up a little ways to Connecticut (one of the smartest), you may not only find the geography's changed, but people may seem friendlier, smarter, or more successful.

If you go to places like Houston, Texas, you'll find a large number people willing to work on your lawn for a very cheap price. Or you'll find a man selling oranges on the side of the street.

If you go to Detroit, Michigan, you will find a large number of homeless black people wandering aimlessly in the streets, getting in the way of your fucking car like fucking assholes because they don't have the fucking brain capacity to look both ways before the cross the street. Or you'll find assholes who leave their broken down cars in the middle of the street like fucking jerkoffs WITH THE FUCKING DOOR OPEN because it's WAY too hard to close a door or even attempt to push the piece of shit to the open parking space on the side of the road two feet next to them fuck that guy

Summy010 2009-04-09 16:08:51

No that tuition cost was for the past year alone. It's only so high because she is forced to take so many pointless classes that have nothing to do with her actual chosen career. My favorite was $450 for English class.

By supplies I mean what she uses to do her homework.
She needs special materials to build models of proposed buildings. These models sometimes are big enough that they can't fit inside her car. I have a few pictures if I haven't explained it clearly. It's kind of a pain.
When she does computer designing, the students are required to have their work printed out at printing stores that tend to charge $25-40 per print. Because it needs to be glossy paper, high quality ink, all this crap the University professors demand. We've tried doing it at home but apparently the quality wasn't good enough.
Then of course there are the little things like pens, pencils (Especially pencils for manually drawing diagrams, she burns through a hell of alot of pencils). It all just adds up over the year.
Then at the end of each year, the students need to create portfolios of everything they've done (That includes previous years at the school) that can be presented to actual Architectural firms. So they need to spend even more money at the printing place to create a very detailed portfolio.

The public transportation sounds amazing though. Hell here in Canada the best we get is a bus that smells like urine every 30 minutes. Every hour after 9pm. And I know the bus route will take the college students to the front of their college, but they don't take the university students to the university. I've never really understood why.

Also about the books, she's done that a few times in previous years. She tried to do it this year but the books available from other students were kind of disturbing. One book had a few pages stuck together...Kinda creepy.

theSneakySnake 2009-04-09 16:27:36

Upon reading your post here, I did the math real quick (and I agree, most of us here in America would not be able to solve this problem). With the simplicity of your equation, it would take 13 years to pay off. However, in the way of deciding which to go with (because with renting you'd still save 12000 a year, which would be 156000 over those 13 years), the end result really depends on when you want to retire, how much you want to retire with, how well the home will sustain its value, nearby property values, possibilities of refinancing your mortgage, and where you want to take your vacation. I don't really think its a matter that most Americans cannot solve this problem, its just that they'd rather hire someone else to do it. Most of us here in America would actually prefer to use the metric system, it just seems that with our Standard (or English) system is a remaining flaw. The army actually spent billions switching to the metric system, but nobody wanted to learn to properly read it so they ended up switching back to the Standard system.

21, male. Sorry if my math may be a bit wrong, it was done on the fly.

Chusko 2009-04-09 16:28:36

I am an American and I believe that you make some very valid points. Though there are well-educated and cultured people in the USA, the average American is overworked, underinsured, overcharged and ignorant to almost all cultures apart from grossly shallow generalizations (I'm looking at you France, you wine-sucking cheese-munching surrender monkeys.)

I cannot speak for #8 as I do not have the proper experience.

#6 is more of a consequence of the geography than an inability to learn another language. The only non-English speaking people near us are the French Canadians and the Mexicans. The French Canadians don't associate too much with us. The Mexicans have a negative reputation here and most Americans don't want to associate with them. But that's a whole other issue.

#5 (Stream of consciousness, not going in order.) This is a result of a lifetime of patriotic propaganda. Especially after the terrorist attacks, criticism of America brands you as traitorous by some people. Though it has calmed a bit since, there is still a "Love it or get out" attitude. I think that a lack of "real" international experience is a big factor. By "real", I mean actually seeing another country for what it is, not going on prepackaged tours and visiting postcard destinations.

#7 Yeah, there's a lot of fatasses here. In America, you can blame every problem in your life on someone else. You never have to take responsibility for anything. You can blame McDonalds for selling unhealthy food. You can claim that you have an eating disorder due to being bullied as a child.... the list goes on.

I must say, I enjoyed reading your post. I do get very tired of the "America sucks" posts that normally flood the Internet. I think there is a mutual ignorance between the United States and the rest of the world. This is a great country with great opportunities. There are beautiful places and beautiful people. America certainly has it's flaws, but the country with the longest standing Constitution in the world can't be doing too bad.... right?

SoulMaster71 2009-04-09 16:35:56

Fuck, I'm in my senior year in high school (as far as public education goes), and I've never learned a thing about interest, banking, or any of that stuff. They never taught it to us in our history classes, they never taught it to us in math (we spent 7 years going over the basics over and over again, then jumped right into algebra and never looked back), and they never taught it to us in any other class. They teach that stuff in Europe?

Yes, many suburban and rural Americans live in houses rather than apartments. Yes, most of us only speak English, because we're a big country that speaks entirely English and most of us have little reason to leave the country, unlike say Germans or French which might have to leave Germany or France to get a job in their field, elsewhere in the European Union (though with the recent influx of Spanish-speaking immigrants and Congress' refusal to make English the official language, we might end up having to learn Spanish, which currently isn't taught until high school, far too late to actually learn a language). It's true that we aren't familiar with metric/American conversions, and the young (other than myself) tend to be a lot more liberal than the older ones (which is why all the exchange students you met supported Obama, mostly out of white guilt).

Yes, the idiots among us like to spend money they don't have (I blame a media which sets financial and sexual restraint at nothing). Yes, we work longer and harder than Europeans, which means of course increased productivity, and yes the company can fire us without paying extra, because it would be an unnecessary expense on the company. Yes there are Americans without health insurance, but those of us who have it (probably about 5/6 of the nation) get most of our doctor's visits and necessary procedures covered. Yes university study is expensive, but... OK, I've got no excuse for that, but the government doesn't pay for it, an action I fully support.

And yes, we think our nation is the world's best. Why shouldn't we? We're apparently the last guardians of the Christian faith, the last protectors of the capitalist tradition in an increasingly Marxist world, we're working (or at least trying to get jobs, if we're unemployed, which due to a lack of restraint in borrowing and the economic downturn it caused is becoming more and more common by the day) while you Europeans are swinging in the government hammock. We can still keep and bear arms, we still have God and a larger degree of His favor than the Europeans who abandoned Him for science, and if we crumple... Guess whose welfare state loses its defenders? You'll have to start putting up a lot more money for your own defense (is it spelled "defence" in Euro-English?), and you'll lose a lot of those precious "welfare state" benefits.

HuntersMoon 2009-04-09 16:38:21

1. mostly yes
2. it depends on how high up you are in the company
3. i don't care enough to think about that
4. same as 3
5. definitely (as in many think that, not this country is definitely the best)
6. Some Americans can speak English fluently-fixed
7. this mainly depends on where in the US this is taking place
8. Conservatives don't leave the US too often
9. I can't read minds
10. From experiences with my friends, yes
11. *shrugs*

Glad I could help.

RainbowRiderAlpha 2009-04-09 16:44:35

- Someone who supports Mc Cain cannot have friends. It sounds harsh but that's life.

Yeah McCain is a crazy old lunatic, but the weird thing about that is that if he hadn't elected Sarah Palin as his running mate, the election would've been MUCH closer than you would think.

- I don't think you can afford a normal life with kids if your only job is to do other people's lawns.

I was talking about illegal immigrants that sneak over from the Mexican border.

And they don't live normal lives.

But for some reason they all have 17 kids.

And thanks for the crash course.

Summy010 2009-04-09 16:59:17

Well, the professors demand the models be built out of special materials for 2 reasons:
1) So the model can survive being moved and being looked over/graded. The funny thing is, the professors are so full of themselves, they will rip, break, and fuck up these $200+ models at will. They don't care, and they don't pay for anything they do to it. I've also noticed this one professor she has this year sees nothing wrong with leaving permanent marker marks all over it. Instead of pointing out areas that he finds problems with, he uses his marker to draw on it freely. Personally that'd piss me off, the things I make, I prefer to keep in flawless condition.
2) Apparently when the students are out in the field, architectural firms won't accept a model not built by the proper materials. So this is to help "prepare" students for that, get them used to using the material. But the bullshit is that you are exactly right. The material they use looks and feels EXACTLY like cardboard. The first time I ever saw it, that's what I assumed it was. I cannot tell the difference between the 2 to be honest.

As another poster said, Arizona is one of the dumbest states. And guess what university it is? Arizona State University, ASU.

God, I think we need to head over to where you live.

JohnnyUtah 2009-04-09 17:05:49

First of all let me tell you that I am American, have never been to Foreignland and all I know about it is what I see in the TV and read on the internet. Please tell me if it is true, or if it's just Foreign stereotype.

1. If you live in a foriegn land, you lack self awareness when you're made fun of.

2. you shampoo with horse manure and your hair lacks any bounce or sheen.

3. You smell and fart alot

Summy010 2009-04-09 17:40:54

I've met all of her professors and honestly, they all seem to have a god complex. You try to tell them anything and they'll kick you out.

The firms don't pay for the projects or anything, all they really do is review the projects and give feedback. Then in later years they also look for students to give internships to, as that is required for the students to graduate.

The impression that school has given me since day 1 is they really don't care. They don't care if students need to work and go to school, they'll still give out homework, especially on weekends and holidays. They don't care if you have a limited amount of money/resources. And they especially don't care if you have an opinion. I have SO many examples to help prove all of those statements.

As for Canada, I really think it's a toned down version of USA. The two countries have more similarities than differences.

TheBananaPeeler 2009-04-09 17:41:28

lol i agree with 5,6,7, and 10

even know im an american as well :3

SoulMaster71 2009-04-09 17:44:11

"Why do you think capitalism is so good, when it only ends up in forcing people work long hours for almost no wage and letting you get exploited by corporations?"
The only alternatives to capitalism are the systems that take hard-earned money from the rich and especially the middle-class and give it to the poor, which in America means taking it from hard-working people with jobs and giving it to the lazy (the only people without jobs, at least before this crisis started, and the moment the crisis ends the unemployment rate will shrink back to just include the lazy). As long as there's a minority that makes up 13% of the country's population, does 53% of the crime, sells life-destroying drugs for a living and uses that money to buy more drugs, refuses to "play into the Man's hands" and get educations and real jobs, and STILL blames the majority for its problems, a socialist system won't work in America. Fuck, even your Arab/Muslim immigrants are more productive than our blacks... When they're not rioting.

Leole11 2009-04-09 17:45:16

At JohnnyUtah:

Wow man, I can't belive you are so closed minded, he's just asking dude... I am from a foreign country, And you probably don't know where Venezuela is (h ttp://lmgtfy.com/?q=Venezuela) I've never been to USA, I'm going this summer, but if all this stereotyping is true, than i'm happy in mi little country here in South America, I mean, USA denigrates other countries calling them "3rd world", and most of the Americans don't know how to speak another language? Look at me!, I'm 15 years old and I speak English almost perfectly (Idk if it is, you be the judge) That is PRETTY LAME to me....

And about the math question... yeah.. Rent the house, Its better :D

dbz4eva 2009-04-09 17:57:23

In a totally unrelated subject, I'm british. I speak a little bit of german (not enough to answer any questions in german, maybe some easy ones) and I could work out that math question if I could be bothered to.

TheSavant 2009-04-09 18:02:00

Most of what you've said is more of a caractiture of the basic US citizen than it is a truthful observation, some are true, but others are way off base for the average person.

1) Most Americans do indeed live in their own homes. While there are some who spend entirely too much money on their homes, most are pretty responsible with their home purchase and end up making a very good amount of money selling their home when the time comes. So yeah, they originally take out more money than may seem prudent, but the payoff in the end is worth it for the vast majority of people.

2) This really depends on the individual. Some people work really long and hard hours, others don't. We have such a complex economy with so many types of jobs it's kind of hard to say. However, I'd probably say that the average American does not work much more than 40 hours, though there are some who work way more it's usually more of a choice for them than a necessity.

The paid vacation thing sounds about right. We don't have as long of vacations as most Europeans.

The firing thing isn't exactly true. It really depends on the job. If you are working an unskilled labor job, you can pretty much be fired whenever as long as there's a reason, and you don't get much compensation from the employer. But if you work a decent office job there's a good chance you'd get compensation for being fired. And there are unemployment benefits provided by the government for those who apply, and if you worked full-time it shouldn't be too hard to get them.

3) Not true. Most Americans have decent health insurance, typically provided by the employer. The biggest problem people face is when they have long term, expensive illnesses such as certain types of cancer that will cost millions of dollars without insurance. With an illness such as that, coverage can run out for some.

4) True, kinda. College tuition can range anywhere from $5,000-50,000 a year, plus another $1,800 a year for supplies and food. So some need to take out a loan, others don't. A total of about 6k a year isn't that bad if you live at home, with a part-time job. The thing is, most Americans are able to pay off their student loans within a few years, so it's typically not -that- big of a deal. Or at least it isn't to us. Of course, a lot of Ivy League colleges are actually free if you get into them, and there are a ton of scholarship opportunities and such you can earn to lesson the cost. For example, one school's baseline tuition cost is about 43K a year. But the average student only pays 23K with aid. So it's definitely not as cheap as Europe, where you oftentimes get free or near free tuition, but it is more than survivable.

5) I'd say the majority do, but that's just nationalism. I'd say that is the truth with most people in most countries. If not, I'm sorry for those countries.

6) True. Others have provided decent explanation for that.

7) 100 kg is apparently 220 lb, which seems overweight. But I don't know about American tourists and their average waistlines, so I couldn't tell you specifically. I can tell you that America is one of the more obese nations in the world.

8) Neither. Most exchange students are younger, and Obama really swept most of the younger voting populace. Not to mention that 8 people is a pretty small survey.

9) It depends what you mean by familiar. It isn't used as often as the English system in the US, but most could tell you that there are 100 centimeters in a meter and so on. As far as telling you it is 90 degrees in the summer in the US, well using the Fahrenheit system it -is-.. We don't use centigrade for temperature measurements outside of science, so it only makes sense that an American would tell you that.

10) That's a terrible stereotype. Everyone likes to save money. And though some are dumb about purchases, I'm sure it's the same in Europe.

11) I'm not quite sure I'd call this simple math, since there are so many variables involved, but I know that I could solve it pretty easily given a desire to do so. Unfortunately for you, I just got on Spring Break and do not wish to waste my time on the maths.

I'd say most people would be able to do this when they get out of college, if not, they aren't going to be able to afford a 300k house, anyways. :P