Students at Rice always make a big deal about how we're all "weird" and "nerdy" — because, I mean, we're at Rice. And then sometimes, even though I myself am guilty of making this kind of generalization and claim that we're somehow "unique" from students at peer institutions, I feel like we're painting ourselves as more special than we really are.
The weekend after spring break, our Bhangra team competed in Sangam, a South Asian dance competition at Texas A&M University, and to be honest, that's when I realized, no, we really are different. Right off the bat I'm just going to say, that doesn't mean we're better — just that we're different.
Everyone agreed that we loved the performance aspect of the competition. I mean, that's the whole reason we're on the team at all — we love to dance, and we love to perform what we've been practicing for ages and ages. But who would've known there would be so many social aspects involved in this competition?! When we got there, the majority of us was like, "Um, I didn't sign up for this!"
Overall, I have to say, there was such an obvious difference between other schools' teams and us. We were significantly lower in energy, clearly needed to recharge and recover from literally any social interaction with strangers, were obviously unwilling to move physically once we parked our butts in one place, and constantly needed some form of food. One member of our team joked that the other teams seemed to always see us only in the context of food — at the team mixer, we made a beeline for the food both before and after the event, then after we awkwardly ran into some other teams while steadfastly eating Taco Bell, and we were just somehow always stuffing our faces in the lobby every time we bumped into another team at the hotel.
We were simply perpetually tired and hungry, I guess.
The most social member of our team, at least out of those who attended this particular competition, quite vocally proclaimed that we were all so boring. Why were we so antisocial? Why didn't we want to meet people?
I think it’s easy to feel ashamed at mixers when we don’t want to socialize and all we want to do is stick together, and yes there are certainly flaws in that, but at the same time we could see the kind of decorum among team audiences during the actual performances and what that revealed. Sure, they might be more willing than we are to put themselves out there, but it was very obvious that when it came time to maybe show a little more respect and literally just shut up when another team was performing, they just kept talking.
Don't get me wrong, they’re all nice people — at least so far as we could tell based on cursory interactions — but we were undoubtedly different.
And I think the enjoyment we got from the actual competition compared to the enjoyment we significantly lacked in the other aspects of the event lines up with how and who we are as students. In the end, it was about the performance, and honestly — as per usual with Rice students, one would say — maybe we over-prepared and overworked ourselves for it. But in the heat of the moment, under the spotlight, in front of an audience of hundreds, we loved every minute of what we were doing.
