My Freshman Year

Today, my 8am class got cancelled so Lit was the only one that I had. In lit class we reflected on a book that we're all reading called "My Freshman Year" from Rebekah Nathan. It really interests me. As an experiment to find out what college is like, Nathan reapllys to the University that she is a professor at, but as a student. Today in class we were talking about her observations in the cafeteria of who people eat with. Many of my classmates disagreed with her, but I completely agree with Nathan. My highschool was very much like the college that I attend now in terms of diversity. The highschool was actually 98% white. In my graduating class, we had three students of Asain descent, and one from Indian descent. One of the Asain students happened to be one of my best friends. It always amazed me how we'd be walking in the hallway and she would know every other Asain-American student that walked by. I would ask her how she knew them, and she'd reply that it was something that I couldn't understand. She explained it as having something in common with another person. Because they shared the same background and heritage, it was easier to get to know one-another. Also, in a school of primarily white people, it was easy to point eachother out. Another time, she explained it to me through something that I could understand easier. She told me that it would be like me going into a place and finding out someone else is a cheerleading coach. I would be ten times more likely to walk up to them and start a conversation than the random football player next to them because I already had something in common with them. I suppose that this is the same reason that minority students are found eating together in Nathan's book. When coming into college, everybody wants to find people that they share common interests with. I know for me, I automatically found myself with a group of girls who wanted to try out for the cheerleading team. It is just a natural way of making friends. I don't think that it is a problem with racism, but rather it is more comfortable to find people who are more like you. And obviously, I have friends that aren't cheerleaders as well. It's just that eating is a thing that we find time to do between practice, the gym and games. It fits into our schedule that way. If the friends get involved in the same activities, they are more likely to budget their time together so that they can fidn time to eat with oneanother. Because of this, I think that Nathan's results were very accurate.