“Maybe the past is like an anchor holding us back. Maybe, you have to let go of who you were to become who you will be.”
Most girls, and maybe some guys, reading can recognize this quote from the ever-so-famous series, “Sex and the City.” Hearing this from the fictional mouth of Carrie Bradshaw in the rerun of this episode made me think of how much students can change after they graduate from high school and enter college.
When I think of college, I think of where new friends are made, old ones are sometimes forgotten and new identities are formed. But will people really allow others to start a clean slate, or does our past follow us too long?
My first responses to this question were indifferent for certain reasons. First of all, in college, a majority of the friends we make are the ones we meet through Greek life, classes or bars, so we don’t have any way to judge people before we meet them. But on the other hand, a person’s reputation from his or her hometown can taint another person’s view and can sometimes ruin a friendship.
For example, the person might have been considered wild when he or she graduated high school, did a “180” during the summer and now is a serious college student ready to start a new life. But everyone is so acquainted with the person being wild, they might just assume they still are and try to pressure them into doing something they don’t want to.
I’ve also heard girls discussing a guy they met at the bar and people from his hometown telling them that he was a dork or wasn’t cool in high school, usually making the girl uninterested. Even though this might be shallow of the girl, peer pressure from friends can change a person’s mind very easily.
A friendship or relationship should begin from the second two people meet and get to know each other, not from things that have been said about them. Almost everyone in a small college town has at least one mutual friend, so it can be quite difficult not to find out anything about a person. One Web site that has made it easier for people to figure out others is Facebook. You can find out what mutual friends you have, what music they like and almost anything else you want to know. Maybe this is a shortcut to getting to know a person before you have actually met them.
Without resources such as this, two people can be engaging in a conversation, enjoying it, until a subject arises that the two have different beliefs about. Then, the conversation will usually end abruptly or just become awkward until one person can leave. Maybe we, as college students, have it easy because first impressions really aren’t first impressions anymore.
Beginning college is one of the events in life that you will remember forever. The parents are not in full focus anymore, freedom is almost completely abundant and it is where most people figure out what they want to be and even who they want to be. People change. Even though sometimes it can be for the worse, it happens, and we need to remember that we might be changing ourselves and not even realize it.