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Moreover, I was guilty of stereotyping Americans. I should not have believed the stereotype about Americans that most of them are overweight. Before I came to America, someone told me that Americans are obese, and if I wanted to keep a good figure, I’d better cook Chinese food and eat as little American food as I could. After I came here, I noticed that a large amount of girls I saw on the downtown streets and campus own a thin and healthy figure. I realized that this stereotype mislead me, since just a few people are overweight. In addition, I also suffered some misunderstanding about Chinese students. Many Americans seem to think that all the Chinese students are good at math. Once I asked one of my classmates a math question, he felt surprised and said, “I thought you could have solved any of the math problems; you Chinese students are all good at it!” However, the fact is that I never learn Calculus before. When I was in high school, most of students studied at least twelve hours a day. The only advantage is that I made a solid foundation in high school and learned math deeper than American students because of the long study hours. Additionally, if Chinese students do not work hard at college, they will fail at classes as well. In such circumstances, the stereotype, which argues that Chinese students are all good math learners, is not true. Stereotypes have great impacts on people all over the world. One of the reasons why people believe stereotypes blindly is that they know less about the objects. In order to decline the uncertainty of this new object, people choose to believe the stereotypes to feel safer. For the purpose of understanding the world more objectively, we ought to treat stereotypes critically and at least not be convinced of stereotypes blindly
