REUPLOADED since the system deleted the previous post for some reason
August 29th, 2019
I spent some time at the Welcome Back Cookout on the Park-Stradley and Smith-Steeb lawn. This was during our first couple of weeks of being on campus, and there were many bright faces to meet and talk to.
The experience that I took away from the event was a sense of community and individuality of each person that I talked with. Everyone had their own story of origin, their own interests, their own lives to live; but at the end of it all we were all united by our common interest about the world around us.
The event served as a very good steppingstone to really connect to people with similar interests as my own and we were able to exchange contact information, chat about classes, and relax before the workload of school became too overbearing. While the event didn’t directly relate to international affairs itself, the idea of it served as a good starting point for any conversation. I spoke about topics that I would have never thought about with a normal group of random students, but the opportunity to bring up those topics was presented for the first time.
An interesting interpretation of the jam-packed campus was described to me by my brother before I began attending here. He said that everyone resides in small bubbles for the interests groups that they are involved in. When you find someone that you really connect with, they are typically overlapping in many of these bubbles. The campus becomes a much smaller place once you find which bubbles you want to be in. This idea of microcosms of people began to make sense to me once I started talking to people that I related to. It made the campus go from a grand, sprawling region to just lots of focused groups of people that I could connect to with others.
This ideology also has had its effects on my view of the world itself. Each nation and culture lives in its own bubble of interests. When we cross those lines to another place in the world, we can see into their lifestyles more clearly and find that we are all that different after all. The human connection that we share with all people will help us to live in a world of compassion and realize that we all must share this Earth together.
The biggest takeaway I had was a removal of some of the hesitations I had of college before coming here. I am not a very outgoing or social person, but once I find a group of people that I enjoy talking to, I become much more open. I hope to bring my passion and enthusiasm for my studies and use them to connect with those around me to enrich the lives of those around me.