What can you do for us?

Egypt Today, the magazine at which I work as a part-time copyeditor, has a couple good articles this month. One is about the American University in Cairo (AUC) and its study abroad students [article here]. Americans' interest in the Middle East has skyrocketed in the last decade, with many more kids coming to place like Egypt. But the cross-cultural exchange hasn't been much of an exchange:

"With America’s recent record on foreign policy, it is easy to see where some Egyptians’ skepticism might arise; that is, wariness of the ‘learn about them to beat them’ mentality. Discussions with some of AUC’s study-abroad students reveal that growing American interest in the region has carried with it a stereotype: that of the political science or international relations major, putting in a requisite year in the Middle East before jetting home to a Capitol Hill think tank."

I am not an AUC student, but I feel a little implicated by this statement. Milli is here, in part, to gauge if she is more interested in international law or domestic (American) law. But I am here, in part, out of the hope that a year in the Middle East will help me get into grad school and after that a job at, yes, a think tank. [Not one on Capitol Hill, because there aren't any, but possibly one in DC.]

But it is not merely a cynical "what can you do for us" mentality: we wanted the international experience, we wanted to learn about another vastly different culture, we wanted to serve the poor through our job. And we have done those things.