Is there an AMA American thread?

[upskilledotter]

I have so many (probably really boring) questions to ask of Americans (USA) but don’t know if a suitable thread exists.

Others have addressed this too and those are great answers. It's a complex subject. I have tried to explain GCSEs and A Levels to my US friends and family and they find these equally foreign.

Junior year is important academically because by Christmas of sr year you probably have your offers/have accepted a place and are just keeping your hand in whilst enjoying all the sr year (leavers') activities.

Junior year is also important because at the end of it/during the start of Sr year you apply to colleges and universities*. So your grades from Jr year are v important b/c they show the future schools your achievement/attainment. Usually, the most able + hardest working have the best grades. Also in Jr year you take the SAT or ACT (or both) for the first time and possibly the second and these scores are sent automatically to your first 5 choices. Colleges/universities compare these scores against your GPA to determine whether you're actually capable or your teachers have just been incompetent/setting easy assignments/giving you good grades.
High school diplomas have requirements - a certain combination of classes and minimum grades in these and the grades are averaged together to determine your GPA (grade point average) A=4 and downwards. At my school, there were AP classes which were advanced and in these the letter grades were worth an extra point, i.e. A=5 which boosted one's GPA. GPA is usually quoted or attached in some way to your diploma to show 'levels'. There is also an attendance requirement - if you miss too many days/classes you can fail.

Diplomas come with distinctions: summa cum laude = with highest honor, cum laude = with honor indicate that your GPA was above a certain level. This is true at college/university level (similar to UK first or 2.1, etc.)

The GED is a certificate awarded after you successfully retake at community college (like FE) a bunch of classes you failed/dropped out of. Your parents have to pay tuition fees and no transport is provided. If you have dropped out of school to have a baby or otherwise missed your window to go to HS, it is an important route to continuing your life - you can use it to apply to college/university or other courses. Most jobs, even at MickeyD's (McDonald's) expect a HS diploma if you are 18+. As per @rachel734 , it is not prestigious but it is useful. A contemporary of mine has parlayed her GED into a PhD and is a university professor.

*(college = BA/BS undergrad only, 4yr course is standard; university, often divided into college or faculties [e.g. of Liberal Arts; of Engineering; of Art] also can award masters and PhDs and may have a connected law school, medical school & teaching hospital)

No. We say restroom or bathroom. In schools those places are called lavatories and the kids often call them lavs. We never say loo and toilet, as stated above, means the porcelain feature itself.

To graduate from high school:
Pass English every year - this is a mixture of language/grammar and literature
Pass Math every year - Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra II, Advanced Maths or similar
Pass PE - freshman & sophomore years
Pass History & Science - freshman/sophomore/junior
Add in extras like languages or art or music - pass them
Keep your attendance up.
Every class will have a mixture of assignments and tests/exams. The scores for these will be averaged by your teacher to determine your final grade which is then converted to a letter. The letter grades are then assigned a number (A=4, B=3 ...) These are then averaged to calculate your GPA.
And everyone will tell you endlessly that sophomore means 'wise fool'...

Also you often hear men's room or ladies' room or little boys'/little girls' room. Some places have cute names: e.g. Gulls and Buoys.

Restrooms are in public places, not people's houses. These are bathrooms even if there's no bathtub.

Where I live (SoCal), Urban is the city, Suburban is the outlying homes, usually occupied by people who commute to the city (also known as “bedroom communities” as there is a lot of houses and retail but usually no industrial businesses) and Rural is the outskirts — some are farms, so more land, relatively more animals. Think people who own horses.

Plenty of parks, shopping, restaurants, etc., in walking distance in the suburbs. Definitely need transportation to live rurally.

Bit of celeb gossip - I live in a suburb, but near rural areas, including Tom Selleck’s avocado farm. 😂

Funny how the words have become interchangeable, but it used to be two separate things - bathrooms were in someone’s home and restrooms were public.*

*From way back when, when posh restaurants/hotels started having literal rooms for ladies to rest or fix their makeup, and you walked through that room to get to the ladies toilets.

Most houses and flats have at least 1 1/2 bathrooms.

Who mows the grass on the parkways?

@ilovepixie

The homeowners do.

The suburb where I live encourages No Mow May and also encourages the planting of pollinator plants in the parkway. However, if utility companies need access to the pipes and whatnot underneath, it can all be dug up.

We also shovel snow off the sidewalk in front of the house.

The city.

How do you feel about Hoa's? I'm not sure we have the equivalent here in the Uk.

Fellow American here, from the Hudson Highlands area of NY.

NC because I find this site to be hostile against Americans most of the time.

I've been here for about a decade, and I know what you mean. Most of the time it's more of a smug, condescending tone and an utter certainty of British cultural and intellectual superiority rather than outright hostility. I think of it as "lost empire syndrome".

One note about milk - even kids don't drink milk at dinner anymore. Fluid milk consumption has been trending down for decades.

I agree with all of your other answers.

Re the bulk buying, the houses here are much larger on average, and have more storage space. I have a 25-cubic-foot fridge-freezer in the kitchen, a 20-cubic-foot fridge-freezer in the garage, and an upright 20-cubic-foot freezer in the garage. I also have shelves in the garage, which is off the kitchen, for canned goods and paper products. So yes, I buy in bulk. It's much cheaper and means fewer trips to the stores.

They're going out of fashion, at least where I live. I would never buy in one.

There are quite a few HOA communities where I live, and almost all new construction is in HOAs. We have lived in one for more than 20 years, and for the most part, it has been a good experience. I do know that there can sometimes be issues of overreaching by management, but in my state, we have fairly robust property owners' rights that somewhat limit what HOAs can impose.

As the OP I genuinely think this has been a really enlightening and positive thread.

I can understand reluctance to engage but just ignore if you don’t like.

Not one poster has been negative about the US or Americans that I can see.

Let us foster an atmosphere of mutual understanding or respect rather than assume otherwise.

If you read my original thread the milk question is about what I have seen in films and tv - it wasn’t anything but an innocent query.

I genuinely am intrigued by things - what’s wrong about that?

So …

More questions:

1. I clumsily asked earlier about which part of the US was “most American” - what I really wanted to articulate/ask was - if I could only visit one place in USA and get a “taste” of America where would you suggest?
2. How does the dating scene work? In the films/tv I see people appear to see a few people at a time - does being “serious” generally happen before or after sex?
3. What kind of holidays do people aspire to? I know that’s general but where is an indulgent destination (both in US and abroad)?
4. How much emphasis do you put on your “origin story”? I mean does it matter that much to you if your great grandmother was Scottish?
5. Is veterinarian treatment (I have cats!) straightforward? Or is it more expensive to have pets?

Thanks again

I clumsily asked earlier about which part of the US was “most American” - what I really wanted to articulate/ask was - if I could only visit one place in USA and get a “taste” of America where would you suggest?
The reason this is hard to answer is, in part, because we have exported so much "American" content. In the 60s I might have said "Disneyland" but now there are Disneylands all over the world. American TV and movies are globally available. So, it's hard to answer. America is huge with 340 million people. It's one reason each state has its own culture. They are something smaller to belong to.

How does the dating scene work? In the films/tv I see people appear to see a few people at a time - does being “serious” generally happen before or after sex?
I have been with DH for 36 years so I don't know really. Our DS was a serial dater.

What kind of holidays do people aspire to? I know that’s general but where is an indulgent destination (both in US and abroad)?
Everyone loves Hawaii. People travel to the national parks which are jewels. People go to islands like Bermuda or the Bahamas. They visit family, of course. My family was more of the church/library/monument/museum/historic site visitors, so we went to the UK, Europe, Russia, places like that during school holidays or summer.

How much emphasis do you put on your “origin story”? I mean does it matter that much to you if your great grandmother was Scottish?
Yes and, again, I think this is about finding belonging in this vast immigrant-settled land we live in. It establishes a kind of identity in a group and speaks about your mutual history and past. It's a strange American thing--a Polish stonemason and a Polish doctor, in Poland, wouldn't have much in common, but here in the US, they might attend the Polish-American club as peers. It's also food related. Everyone loves pirogies.

Is veterinarian treatment (I have cats!) straightforward? Or is it more expensive to have pets?
It's straightforward in that it costs a lot and you pay for it. Some people have pet insurance which I have heard helps with costs. This is, of course, for companion animals. Livestock is a different thing altogether.

These questions are fun, upskilledotter! Thank you for starting the thread. To take on the travel ones . . .

I am partial to New England as a sample of America: the Berkshires (a lovely vacation area in western Massachusetts), Vermont, Maine, and some places on the outskirts of Boston. Concord is a picturesque town that offers great historical sightseeing and a nice half-day walk along Battle Road. Plimoth Plantation, in Plymouth, is a very good living history museum about the Pilgrims.

I will also give a shout-out to my native Great Lakes region. Chicago is a vibrant city with good food and good museums, as others have already mentioned, and from there one could drive north to quieter towns such as South Haven. During COVID, my extended family and I took a driving tour of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, visiting the Soo Locks, the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, Tahquamenon Falls, and the Ojibwa Museum in St. Ignace, which is on the site of the 1671 Jesuit mission. The Upper Peninsula is a different world. It can be frustrating both to get there and to travel there, but it would plunge you into a culture that is very distinctively North American.

When planning holidays, many Americans focus on the U.S. When I was a child, only 5% of U.S. citizens had a passport. (I should add that in those days, it was possible to visit Canada and Mexico without a passport, and many people did not count that as "abroad."). A typical holiday for us was either Lake Michigan or a city break in Chicago. We also visited Amish country in Indiana and Ohio. Later, as a teenager, I was taken to Boston, New Orleans, the Great Smoky Mountains, and the Rocky Mountains.

Passports are more common now (Google says half of U.S. citizens now have one!), and well-educated people, especially on the coasts, travel overseas regularly. France, Italy, and Portugal are very popular, as is the Caribbean. Greece is having a momentthat seems to be where all my friends want to go! More adventurous travelers go to other continents, too, but often with a distinct focussome people make multiple trips to East Asia, others to South America, others to Australia and New Zealand.

I think vet costs are higher in New York than in London. My kitty's last check-up was $105 (£77), plus $60 (£44) for a rabies booster. But salaries are also higher on average, so perhaps it comes out in the wash?

This is a wonderful thread!

I was walking through the park under the space needle in Seattle last month with my daughter (we are British). She asked me how crime compares between the Uk and the USA..

i said I wasn’t sure on stats but the main thing to remember was that Americans had guns which changes the playing field enormously.

the very next day, there was a mass shooting in the same park we’d been walking through. Very, very sobering and sadly totally proved my point.

NC because I find this site to be hostile against Americans most of the time.

I've been here for about a decade, and I know what you mean. Most of the time it's more of a smug, condescending tone and an utter certainty of British cultural and intellectual superiority rather than outright hostility. I think of it as "lost empire syndrome".

Exactly this, and it's not just the USA which bears the brunt, other countries also come in for criticism as apparently none are as wonderful as Britain.

Edited to say that I do agree with OP that this thread has been mostly positive, but usually they are anything but.

1. Are there regular school dances ?
2. Is it true there is a real 'dating' culture in teens -ie every dance, party, prom etc it is expected they will take a date?
3. Why do so many Americans use initals in their names ie Chad J Smith? or have 2 first names they use ie Paul Thomas Anderson?

I know the word parkway has different meanings in different regions.

Here in the Chicago area, the parkway is the grass between the sidewalk and the street, and parkways are often planted with trees.

The forestry division looks after these trees. They are pruned regularly, or removed if too many limbs fall during a storm, or if theres a specific bio threat to a certain variety - Dutch Elm Disease claimed hundreds.

There is no way the municipality would send out a man with a lawnmower to mow the parkways. They do mow the parks.

I can't speak for the teen dating scene nationally, but often groups of teens attend dances without dates where we live. My granddaughter attended her senior prom with a group of girlfriends. They all still connect with people to dance with in other groups, but it is much less date focus than it was in my day or when my children were dating.

As for mowing shared areas, our HOA handles that. It's one of the things we pay for with our dues.

I think that anti-Americanism seems to rear its head on MN when someone is thinking about moving to the US and is asking advice. Much of the commentary can be on point, but there are often statements of gross negative generalizations from people who went to Disney world in 1995 and considered themselves an expert in all of American culture. There are often quite a few misconceptions.

But in day today discussions about a variety of topics, I seldom find any negativity as a result of being American.

As others have said, I think this is a very enjoyable thread and I enjoy talking about these things. Thanks, OP.