A lederhosen-wearing man bought a beer at the grocery store and immediately opened it and started drinking it, right next to the pretzel stand. 

“How German,” I thought to myself. 

Shortly afterwards, I went home to watch the TED Talk titled “The Danger of a Single Story,” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. It details her experience as a Nigerian woman with Americans and other people from Western nations shocked by her stories of her childhood, as they never fit the “single story” that we often hear of Africa: an entire continent of famine, desert and poverty.

On an international students trip, a friend and I met another student named Jason and asked where he was from. 

“Where do you think I’m from,” he replied. After looking at him for a moment, my friend guessed Taiwan. Jason laughed and told us that he was from California. Even as Americans, we all carry different “single stories” of what other Americans look like while abroad. 

From castles to lederhosen and dirndls, I see things every day and think “how German,” or “how French,” while simultaneously hoping that nobody sees me and thinks “How American.”

A man at the bus stop heard my accent and cringed in disgust, disregarding my answer to his question. Did he know only a single story of me? 

The day of the shooting at Tree of Life Synagogue, a classmate asked me if I was ever scared to go to school in America. She looked into my life as an American through a single story: one of violence and danger.

I am involved in a state-led initiative called “Rent an American” where American students abroad visit German high schools and talk about growing up in America. For many of these students, we are the only American they have ever met. By traveling abroad and providing a sample of our lives and a story that differs from those seen in movies or the news, we have the opportunity to break the cycle of single stories that plagues the entire world. 

— Shannon Rabotski is a 2016 graduate of Monroe High School and is a junior at Drake University spending the year studying abroad in Tubingen, Germany. She can be reached at shannon.rabotski@drake.edu.