Studying Abroad in Mexico as a Mexican American

I was born in Mexico but I have spent the majority of my life in the United States. My parents brought me here when I was only a baby and although we would make frequent trips back to visit we would normally only stay for short periods of time.

In the United States, we tended to be one of only a handful of Hispanics in town, wherever we lived. There were no Hispanic kids in my elementary school, none in my middle school and less than 3 that I knew of in my high school of more than 1,000 students. There was no Spanish language TV, no Spanish language radio, and the internet was really an irrelevant factor in my life until I started college.

I was always very intrigued by the elusive Mexican culture that I would hear my mother talk about. When I started college I decided to be proactive about my curiosity and I used every school vacation I had to travel down to Mexico. I enjoyed my short vacations to Mexico, I felt that they taught me so much about the culture that I could not find back home.



My senior year in college I decided to go to Mexico to study for a semester at the Universidad de Guadalajara. Studying in Mexico was a true immersion into the culture, proving to be a far different experience than my short vacations there had been.

One of the first things I learned that distinguished Mexican public universities from American public universities was that tuition was covered by the state. For Mexicans, this meant they could attend college, have all the supplies, books and fees taken care of for far less than $100 a year.

That allowed nearly any student who wanted to attend college the opportunity to do so without having to bare the heavy financial burden that attending an American university comes with.



Another difference I found was that classes generally were assigned to each student. This structure meant that many students ended up having class with the same group of 40 or so students all throughout college. This allowed groups of students the opportunity to get to know each other much better than they would have otherwise and it also created something of a loose fraternal organization associated with each group.

The most significant difference that I noticed between the two university cultures was that the concept of school spirit and ‘campus life’ seemed to be missing in Mexico.

On campus there were no big posters or signs with school colors or mascots. There were no huge bulletin boards announcing school sporting events or club activities, and I never saw any T-shirts or clothing with the University logo.

Although there were fascinating differences between the two cultures there were also many similarities.

At their core, the students at the Universidad de Guadalajara were just like the typical American college students. They talked about music, TV, current events, dating, and what they were going to do on the weekend. They worried about what they were going to do after college, and if they had chosen the right major. They had a diverse student body with: fashionista girls always wearing the latest trendy outfits, the young rebels wearing Che Guevara T-Shirts and talking about injustice, the preppy kids and their posse, the intellectuals always with their heads planted in books, and even with the jocks that would never be caught without their soccer balls.

My semester in Mexico showed me that I had underestimated how similar Mexican and American students were and how different the infrastructure of the Mexican university was from the American university. 

I enjoyed finding the commonalities between the two cultures and I appreciated the differences because they gave me a better understanding of both cultures simultaneously. My semester abroad was an incredible learning experience and I firmly believe that there is no better way to understand and learn about a culture than immersing yourself directly in it!