Time is spent carefully analyzing the programs, student
body, activities, and environment to try to make the best decision. For most
people, I guess everything works out. Then there are the other people, like
myself, who get to their chosen and paid for institution to realize that it is
not the right fit. Or, I could just be challenged by such social norms.
I graduated high school with high hopes for the next phase
of my life at a four-year university, which I had somehow come to the
conclusion to attend. Because I lived in a rural area and went to a high school
where I knew the names of everyone in my graduating class and camouflage was
the only pattern in fashion, I wanted something completely different. This
combined with the pressuring hearsay that college was going to be best time of my
life and where I was going to make lifelong friends, I was looking forward to
the fresh start. Oh, and I was finally going to get to study what I was
passionate about, art and design, which no one knew anything about where I was
from. Trying to explain what in the world was graphic design always ended in
perplexed failure.
In the weeks leading up to my sendoff, I was not very
enthusiastic about going in the first place since I’m not the most outgoing person
and still had no clue what to expect. But boy did I not anticipate what was
about to happen. My roommate, who except for the spelling had the same name as
me, had already moved in and had started making friends because she was in the
already assembled marching band. Then there were my suitemates, mostly from New
Jersey and freakishly resembled some of the Jersey Shore castmates, who showed
little interest in getting to know my roommate and myself from the get-go.
After the goodbyes to the parents, the weird started to occur.
It was like summer camp. I arrived four days early so that I could play
icebreaker games in circles with far too perky student guides and walk in lines
like a kindergartener with my assigned group to eat at all the dining locations
at oddly scheduled times. There was singing, dancing, a magic show, organized
recreational games, and they somehow worked in a presentation or two about how
you should not drink in excessive amounts, which people had already begun
doing. To be honest, I knew then I did not want to be there.
As classes began, I noticed that everyone looked and acted
alike – specifically everyone came in pairs; mostly white females wearing
dreadful yoga pants who would soon to be paying for friends and wearing Greek
letters of the cliques that most closely resemble clones of themselves. Beyond
strange. As a person who values individuality and dressing in better than
pajamas everywhere I go, this was the worst. My art classes were not much
better as I was not being challenged by the bizarre projects that were
dispensed out. The overall environment was not conducive to creativity either,
as half of my classes were in an old hospital that had little renovation;
picture an operating room with oxygen gages and x-ray light boxes embedded in
the walls with a table in the middle for the patients, I mean design students.
I had to get out of there.
