With any transition you experience the excited anticipation, followed with a sense of nervousness and fear comes along with a heap of expectations. I consistently asked myself, will I feel like I belong, Is this the right place for me as well as the ultimate question, will it meet my expectations.
A transition into College marks a step into you entering into a world of uncertainty, where you are exposed to new a environment, referring to both different cultural and biospherical factors, and are expected to adapt quickly. I have always imagined my college experience as being a time that marked an immense amount of personal growth but what I did not realize was that I am the primary driving force for this growth. College merely provides a space where you are allowed to momentarily enter into a bubble and as a result devote time discovering yourself through a myriad of academic and social interactions. I have never been able to devote so much time to myself as well as been allowed to act in a more self-interested manner. I come from a large family and as a result I obviously was required to be more independent but was also still expected to puts others needs before my own. I expected college to be a place that would allow me to focus more on myself, through pursuing both academic and extracurricular interests as well as through creating new relationships. But college also comes with its own set of constraints and demands. Also although it feels like I am living in a Lewis & Clark bubble, we all still products of the varying environments we individually grew up in and as result we bring along our set of biases and experiences.
Although smaller in scale our Lewis & Clark community is just as much a representation of what is going on throughout the rest of the U.S. as much as any other community. Although we can choose to isolate ourselves, it is much more difficult to ignore issues of inequality, and lack of understanding that exist in our community. These discrepancies play out in both day to day interactions as well as in how the administration’s addresses certain issues, specifically the events of last semester. Ultimately, what I am saying is that I can not assume that we are all like minded just because we have been attracted to go same college. Additionally, although we are all not like minded that is not necessarily a bad thing,an exposure to new perspectives can act as opportunities for more growth on both side. Also the collection of individual’s actions creates the environment we live in, our environment is not stagnant but rather something that is constantly shifting based on how actors , specifically students, faculty and the administration, interact with one another.