Pronoun in English without specific referent?

Question

Writing academic essays in English can be a daunting task for the EFL writer (my native language is German), but for me a very specific problem gives me headaches and leaves me sitting with a smoking brain pondering what to do now. In German there is the 3. person singular pronoun *man* which refers to no one specific referent. In German it can be used often and is not frowned upon in academic writing either. A translation as example: "One can not help but wonder about the differences between English and German." Now the *one* is where the German *man* would be written. But when I do so my professors tell me that I should watch my *ones*. The thing is, when I write an essay in English and use *one* at some point, that *one* tends to breed and propagate and all its little offspring heap themselves all over my text and I have to call an exterminator to get rid of them. Now my question is whether there is some nice and easy way to indicate an unspecified referent when writing, similar to *man*, but which is not considered to be bad or Germanic style.

Answer 1

Hmmm... How about, "an individual", or even, "a person"?

Or change sentence entirely:

 "One can not help but wonder about the differences between English and German."

"The differences between English and German are wondrous." Are baffling, are myriad... Etc.