As a fourth-year college student, my senior year has for sure been the most emotional. Despite all of the excitement of looking forward to my future life after graduation and getting my degree, I have become more sensitive – I catch a whiff of kitchen cleaner and suddenly I’m immersed in a flurry of vivid memories from my first year when I was working at the University dining hall. More and more, my first-year experiences keep coming back into my mind. What is amazing is that I can “see” myself growing up through these pieces of retrospective memory. In hindsight, I have begun wondering why I was so afraid of these situations or why I’d remain silent in the moments when really should’ve said something. To explain these situations more explicitly, I recalled three moments that almost made me want to go home.
- How to Make Friends
Different from high school, where people surrounding me has the same background as me, college friends are far more diverse – they vary in ethnicity, national origin, and cultural background. Even people from my own country are surprisingly varied – they have different living habits, ways of communication, and perceptions. When I first came here, my initial thought was that making friends here was like dating – we asked each other’s names, majors, national origins, classes taken, and more. Usually, people with more things in common or similar profiles gathered together and unfortunately, I always seemed to be just on the outside of what is readily acceptable or sought-after as a good friend. I knew it was something about my personality or even my personal charisma, but I just didn’t feel comfortable making friends in that fast way. I had friends back home who made me feel secure, and I always had lots to say with them. “Why am I here? I want to go home. What’s wrong with this place?”
- Professor Says To Form Our Own Groups
I know that if I had been the professor, I would also have thought that asking students to form their own groups was the better method and was often the one that the students preferred. However, every time my professor said this, I began worrying; students usually selected their “friends” if they knew others in the class or if they’d taken classes together before, and they would select others that they’d worked with successfully and avoid those not as motivated as they perceived themselves to be. Sometimes, I would be left out, which was good to me, as I could work with someone that I did not know, and it always turned out to be more productive in terms of our group product. Yet, sometimes, I would be “invited” to join one group. At first, we went to our group meeting with our notes and ideas, but later the meetings became social activities. Furthermore, I was not even interested in their conversations, but failed to get their attention so that we could get back to doing the work together. Ultimately, I might become the only one who did work during that group meeting. “Why am I here? I feel like this group meeting is a waste of time.”
- I’m Assuming English Is Not Your First Language
This must be the most unforgotten moment throughout my college experiences. Why? I don’t know, and I am still figuring it out. I remembered that once, one of my TAs was concerned with what to do with my assignment. He also guessed that English was not my first language, and asked the professor to look at my assignment. My professor later went ahead and copied my assignment into a Microsoft word document and then made comments in red on it. When I opened that word document, I noticed that her comments, which were in red, were almost double the length of my assignment. At that moment, my first response was “Why am I here? She just doesn’t know how good I am in writing in my own language”. It is a frustrating experience, yet I want to appreciate my TA and my professor for using a polite way to remind me that I should pay more attention to my writing.
Above are three of my most frustrating moments that occurred in my first year. However, I have learned from all of them. I now feel more relaxed sitting in a group of new people; I can remind my groupmates that we need to work on our group work in a friendly way if they begin chatting; and I know how to respond to someone who wants to help me. Honestly, language and culture are not the main problems to overcome when dealing with these situations. Instead, we need patience and practice. For my entire freshman year, I felt overwhelmed by everything that I encountered, but that changed after I got used to this new environment, particularly after I became involved in some organizations on campus. Thanks to my involvement in these organizations, I gained practice in communicating and interacting with other people. Somehow, once I got used to talking and sharing in front of groups of people, I knew that I would be just fine! The point I want to raise here through this experience is that we need to break out of our comfort zones and avoid going too long without trying something different.