Student Essays-- Hispanic-American

One of the most prevalent fears that we as humans experience is that of "labelization." Far worse a feeling than being labeled is being labeled as an outsider, as not fitting into a community or a status quo. This fear is definitely something we all feel at the outset of the college experience. Thankfully we do not all have to experience this labelization in racial or sexual ways, as Miguel Ramirez did. "I arrived at Dartmouth, found I wasn't 'gay enough' for the gay students and that I was noticed by others for being Hispanic before I was Miguel." (Ramirez Anthology 528)

 In coming to a place that is wholly new and foreign to us, one of our greatest desires is to find somewhere that we "plug in" to our new environments. This is also something we are told to expect in coming to school. Parents or friends will say "College is where you find what you want and where you belong". It seems to me that because of this fear, there are times that we panic because we seem to be failing in that regard. Even in this "failure" is transient, students think that they are doing something inherently wrong: that they should have gone to that last party, or maybe even studied a bit less. We do not realize that so many others around feel the exact same way, and wish for the same sense of belonging that we do. Our success at finding a place in college seems to be directly correlated to our success in the future, and any sort of failure- socially or academically- is terrifying. We all feel for a time, as Norma Andrade phrased it, "a kind of uncertainty that I couldn't place." (Andrade Anthology 531)

Although we all deal with this uncertainty of ourselves and our surroundings in differing ways, what we have to realize is that every one of us is feeling these emotions. Of course, some of us have high school friends here with us, or simply feel comfortable alone, but we all long for new connections and relationships that reinforce our image of ourselves. I had a conversation last Thursday with a friend from high school whom I hadn't seen in a while. She at one point asked me, "Do you feel like you've really found people you relate to yet?" I responded with a no. "I'm trying, but I think its simply less immediate than we'd like it to be." It was comforting to hear her say she felt uncertain, as I definitely had, especially during that week. This led me to the conclusion that if we all worked hard to open ourselves to the people around us, not to allow our uncertainty to get in the way of striving for new relationships, we'd all be better off. Although there are some aspects of who we are that we cannot or do not want to change, we are lucky enough to now live in a place where there is something for everyone. All we have to do, is go out there and find it.