Ideally, education provides mutual enrichment for professor and students. In this article, the author often fears that he is learning far more than his students are in a course on intercultural communication. Its real subject sometimes seems to be the iron grip of American culture upon his students. What is most fascinating is that the power of that grip remains resolutely unacknowledged. The author suggests that cultural studies help one see that knowing the world better is knowing the self better. Coming to understand the cultural weight that each one carries, and to empathize with the different loads borne by others, is finally to enrich and liberate the individual self.