You just reminded me of my own experience of this. All the way into university and writing papers, my natural tendency was to write about subjects in a very passive voice, and it was only slightly reduced because it disagreed with my instincts.

Now I live in a culture where the spoken language is dramatically passive and usually actor-less "Q: walk to the store? "A: Sure, walk together!"

and I am often told that the way I think seems very much like the locals think themselves. But I was already thinking this way in my own language, I was just considered abnormal...