Students with Different Backgrounds

Students from the city, from affluent suburbs, and from the more rural areas seem a lot different when they first arrive. City people are more aggressive, they do everything faster, they talk louder and faster, they walk faster, and they seem a lot less friendly to the others. I know that because I'm from the city myself. There, you just can't say hello to people you meet in the street, and your habit is to just focus on wherever you're going and whatever you're doing. Nobody looks sideways or acknowledges anyone else: actually you just can't as sometimes if you look at the wrong person in the wrong way, it can be dangerous. As well, you don't have time to stop and be more friendly because everything is so fast.

People often complain about us city kids and think we are arrogant but it's not really arrogance, it's more a certain confidence. The fact is, in the city, you have to look confident. If you don't, there are always people who will instantly recognize it and look for ways to take advantage of you.

And city people tend to look down on suburban people, and the other way around too -- especially people from the wealthy suburbs who always seem to expect the whole world to revolve around them. Well I guess, if you have enough money, your whole world really does revolve around you most of the time, and you expect all the rest of it to do the same and that shows in the attitude they present to the rest of us. On the other hand, rural kids are often mistaken in assuming that all city kids are rich.

Now here at university, you can notice all this stuff at first. But everyone is in the same situation, and we're all close enough in background to make where everyone is from unimportant rather soon. The university is in a smaller city, and it's big enough so that when you're walking around or taking the shuttle bus from one part of it to another, you don't see very many people or things that aren't part of the university. Our residence is in one place, and at the other end of the bus route are most of the classes, so you tend to be meeting mostly the same people every day. You don't know who most of them are, but you do recognize the same faces day after day. And it's strange: people nod their heads and smile at each other as they go by; for the ones who aren't from the city it's the same way it's always been, and even for me, I didn't really notice the change until I went back home again at the end of the term when my friends told me I had changed. You do change (people at home told me I was talking slowly!), but it doesn't take long for you to just start behaving exactly the same way you had before: resuming the old habits in the old environment.

But back to the university: once you get to know someone and take the time to try to understand them, working with them or socializing with them, you often forget where they're from. It doesn't matter whether the other people are rich or poor, or African or Hispanic or Caucasian, or even male or female (except in a few cases!) They're just the people you're with at the time. They do come from different backgrounds, and they've had different experiences. So you can learn new things or new ways of looking at things by being with them. Instead of being a problem, the differences are now an asset and an enrichment for your life.