So my average day tends to go as follows:
My alarm cuts through the silence as I lie warmly in my bed. Disgusted, I roll over, fumbling for the device and quickly shutting it off. My average reaction time is about 5 seconds.
I return to a comfortable position and cold-start my brain. I commence a thousand calculations concerning my plans, classes, homework, and exactly how much time I have before I need to begin these things. I try to determine if I have even another 15 minutes of untapped sleeping time before I have to force myself to get up.
Whenever I manage it, I get up, grab my towel, and head to the showers. I brush my teeth while the old pipes fetch whatever is left of the warm water after the other 5 showers in the building have already had at it. This generally takes about 3 minutes.
After I shower, I sit around to dry off; I check my email, text my girlfriend, just about anything that comes to mind.
Donning my headphones, I grab my bag and head to the cafeteria. Once inside, I walk around trying to decide what my body can afford to consume since it's far too late in the day for their greasy breakfast. I sit by myself as always. As I eat, I watch people. I watch them talk, I watch them eat, I watch them study...
Creepy as it sounds, its fun to watch people. To see what they do, how they tick, how they interact. You learn a lot. Walking to class I'll see people absently passing me by, their tunnel vision fixed on their destination. The people here rise from their homes and come to their classes, taking off at dismissal to go back home or to work. The students walk briskly by on the way to their cars, classes, or dorms. There is little communication and other than ambient noise it seems like conversations are a rarity.
George Mason University has disappointed me. I was led to believe that college was a unifying experience where you get to see what it's like to be part of a larger community--a much larger network. I feel like I missed the memo where someone tells you that's not the case. Maybe it's just me and all of my friends going to other schools, but I haven't been part of a large group of friends since high school. What it seems to me is that everyone I know has one of those in college. I don't know... but I think it must be something about Mason. There aren't a lot of unifying factors with only about 28% of it's undergrad community living on campus, all of which are conveniently divided into literally 5 separate and autonomous living communities.
What I think is also contributing is going to be a little touchy.
Mason waves this massive banner over the university with a massive golden and embroidered "D" on the front. That, of course, is D for Diversity. George Mason doesn't hesitate to tell everyone it can that it is the most diverse university in the universe. You've got students here from every state and all over the world, which is great for something like the UN. But this poses a serious issue with building some sort of community. The colossal language, cultural, and identity barriers that diversity puts up alienates the entire student body. The ethnic clubs on campus further reinforce cultural identity, forming cliques and separating the interests of the students as a whole.
I realize it's important to find people you vibe with or whatever and it's certainly important to never forget or deny who you are... but I just think that with the sheer amount of differences we have with each other with our cultures and languages, it just seems like we're only defining the lines that form between us. I'm certainly not an expert on international relations or anthropology but there has to be some way to force things to get mixed up. I just simply don't see the students at Mason being able to come together because of something they all have in common.
I'm not saying anyone is better than anyone else or that anyone is discriminating or segregating, but I think that if you look at it psychologically and sociologically, people feel most comfortable in their own groups. With Mason already segregating students with its inordinate amount of commuter students compared to its on-campus students, there are so many lines drawn between us that we can all hardly call ourselves devout Patriots, much less a community. But I suppose I have to concede that it is in the same fashion we all call ourselves American. From a sociological standpoint, we don't draw these distinctions on purpose, it just kind of happens.
Okay, so maybe I pictured college to be this Athenian community of learning where people held seminars on the grassy lawns and students walked shoulder to shoulder having intelligent conversations and everyone stayed on campus to enjoy indie music and each other's company. Where people would go from dorm to dorm from open door to open door shaking hands and introducing themselves. A place where in 20 years you could meet someone from the same institution and be proud to have common ground.
Well George Mason is building new residence halls and parking decks over those grassy lawns.
Who knows maybe my thoughts and conclusions are unfounded based on an entirely limited scope of observation and maybe the limited enjoyment I'm getting is a direct result of what I'm putting into it. Maybe also colleges everywhere are like this. Maybe since we're not all forced to be in the same school in the same classes with the same people for four years and forced to go to pep rallies and have school spirit we are finally allowed to break the mold and be our own people, forming our own tight-knit group based on close associations of commonalities and values.
I also think it would help to be somewhere where 84% of the student body doesn't drive away every night.
more to come on this subject I think.
No comments:
Post a Comment