We walk through life hearing about the unspoken lines that divide us. It is unclear at what point in development lines start to form between groups, but where there are lines between groups, there are stereotypes. Stereotypes are pretty much an easy way of filling information in based off of assumptions when you don’t know the person any better to know the real answer. High school is based around stereotypes; we all had to suffer through them with the hope that college is so much better. The question is do stereotypes associated with certain groups ever really go away or are we all doomed to live in a continuous form of high school?
The truth is college and high school aren’t vastly different. There are the athletes, the Greeks, the library nerds. There are the people who show up to class every day in heels and then there are those of us who struggle to make it to class in clean clothes. The beauty about college is that it shouldn’t matter what label is associated with someone. Those stereotypes have been left behind giving us the ability to be friends with anyone, right? One group that I notice a lot of hate on is Greek organizations. I am not associated with a sorority, but I have still seen some of the hate that these groups face just over letters. I have had several people tell me out right that they wouldn’t even be talking to me if I were in a sorority. It seems like all across campus if you say you wear certain letters, people form opinions about you before they even meet you. Is college really that different after all?
The beauty of college is that there are no lines that people have to stay inside of. Stereotypes are defied, and we very quickly learn that people are just people. Last semester there was a football player in a lot of my classes. I made a terrible mistake of looking at him and instantly assuming your typical stereotypes only to eat my words. That football player is one of the smartest people I know. He is probably the only person that I have met in college that says they want to go to medical school that I have absolutely no doubt will do it. I have a friend that I met over playing pool that I stereotypically assumed was the type that beat up video gamers when it turns out he is one himself. A guy who was one of those garage band guys in high school is actually a math nerd. College was made to realize that people are never the way you assume. When I look at the people I have become friends with in college, there is a chance that if given the chance I might have been friends with maybe two of them in high school. Stereotypes don’t help us peg who other people are; they peg who we are by the type of people that we miss out on.
I know athletes who are top of the class and some of the nicest people you will over meet. I know your typical nerdy people that are so cool to hang out with, even if you can’t talk video games with them. I am friends with Greeks that everything about them defies the stereotypes they live under. College is about taking the time to actually know people despite differences. Now I will say there are those people that fit the stereotypes, but just because someone is a stereotypical frat guy who may not share the same idea as you do of what makes something fun, that doesn’t mean that he can’t still be a cool guy. Everyone has something amazing to offer to your life if you give them the opportunity to. Live life opened up to the possibility of the extraordinary in the unknown instead of being blocked off by the boundaries of the assumed. Life has so much more to offer than stereotypes; college should too.
