I’ve always believed that being an outsider can make you see the dynamics within a society more clearly. You often need to adapt quickly and learn all sorts of customs and unwritten rules from scratch. I still remember being taught how to make a cup of tea during work experience in a BBC newsroom, which is probably the most valuable skill you could have if you’re a trainee journalist in the UK.
As a foreigner in a culture you don’t know, you have to strip down an issue to its core, and then figure out the nuances. It’s a bit like English grammar. Second-language speakers are often better at it because they didn’t learn the language phonetically as toddlers to then focus on grammar at school. Non-native speakers learn English from scratch: written, spoken and grammar all at once. It’s tough at first but it makes you fearless in front of apostrophes. We may have accents but at least we know the difference between its and it’s - which is more than you can say for many native speakers.
I…