All a Social Misconception

As high schoolers, we all have ideas about what the college life is going to be like. We go as far as to go to campus visitation days to tour the school and sit among the students. It would seem as though the people connect well and that it’s very simple to find people and relate them as well. I fell into this category while I started the college search. I have found one thing to be different about the way I think since then. All it took was one day to teach me this one thing.
I remember driving by what is now my college as school was out for me and the students were walking to chapel. Everyone seemed to be buddy-buddy at Taylor University in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I later applied there and loved what I saw. I did the visitation ordeal like every other college student. I figured with the Taylor University in Fort Wayne being such a small campus, everyone knew mostly everyone and so you wouldn’t have that sense of disconnectedness.
My college has another campus in Upland, Indiana. It was on April 26, 2006 that I learned just how much even small college campuses follow societal norms of being disconnected. A Taylor University van holding dining commons staff as well as students who worked for the dining commons as a part of work study was hit by a semi as the semi crossed the median. Those in the van were from the Upland campus. They were on their way back to their campus after helping the Fort Wayne campus with preparations for a scholarship luncheon that was to be held the next day and was considered a huge event. Five people were killed out of the nine that were in that van. All but one of them was Upland students.
The next day, our small campus in Fort Wayne gathered together for a memorial service to mourn with our sister school. People prayed together, they held hands in a time of need. Here we were, coming together as a community to mourn the deaths of people many of us never knew. Through that experience, we were learning of our own classmates as professors discussed the tragedy and asked for our thoughts and feelings about the situation thrown at us.
Many high school seniors begin their search for a college based upon how large or small it is. Many look for schools who can meet their expectations not only academically, but socially as well. While a college should help the students to develop their individual side, one shouldn’t choose a school because they feel it meets their social comfort zone. That may be asking too much. For a small Christian school, I had thought it would be extremely close-knit. What I learned is that it still had its cliques and times of being disconnected. This isn’t to reflect negatively upon the school I attend, it just proved to this naïve graduate that every place has a problem with people connecting to a places entirety and that problem shouldn’t be the basis as to if it’s where you attend or not. There are too many things colleges have to offer.