Quote:
Originally Posted by Sainters7
Me too, but maybe I've just been lucky. For the most part I find the U.S. guys to be more jokey and even willing to chat/joke outside of the business at hand. Whereas the Canadian guys all seemed to be straight by the book, no nonsense. And if you make a joke or appear too relaxed, they don't seem impressed.
|
See, I've really had the opposite experience.
This past May I was coming back in from Iowa, having traveled in for my dissertation defense--and when I was asked by the Canada Customs official about the reason for my trip, that's what I told him.
He proceeded to ask me about ten follow-up questions: what's your degree in, what did you write the dissertation on, what's next for you, and so on--I was starting to feel like I was being given the third degree. I actually started to think that I might have a problem--even though I'm a Canadian citizen, and in retrospect I can't imagine being denied entry on the basis of some crazy grad-school related line of questioning.
Then he moved on to questions like "and the defense, what was that like? Were you nervous? Were you pretty prepared for the questions?" That's when I realized that his interest was more than professional.
Turns out the guy a graduate student himself. All this time I was feeling interrogated, and it turns out he was just
interested--which I have to say, was a first for me. Generally, upon hearing "I'm doing a PhD in English Literature," customs officers become desperate not to hear any more about it.
In the end, we had a nice conversation for about 10 minutes. In all the times I've gone to the U.S., that has
never happened.