Barnard - Social Scene and Academics?

calmom
Wed, 16 Jul 2014 21:04:31 +0000

I honestly think that the student’s personality plays a large part in their perceptions. My d. made friends with Columbia males. She did not report hostility or difficulty making friends. I am not a parent seeing things through rose colored glasses – I am a parent who knows who my d’s friends are and has spent time hanging out with them. She graduated from college 4 years ago and is still together with the guy she started dating her senior year, who is a Columbia grad. I have to say I know him pretty well and he seems to have a lot of respect for my d. o

Now my daughter is a very socially outgoing person who finds it very easy to start up conversations with new people, is very comfortable in her own skin and has a great sense of humor. So she’d probably laugh off a lot of things that might be distressing to others. She also has always had many male as well as female friends, and she’s quite comfortable hanging out with guys doing guy-type things, such as attending sports events.

I think a person who generalizes about others-- assuming that everyone fits a certain “type” – maybe creating their own barriers to meeting and relating to others. A student who believes that that all students at Columbia are prejudiced against or despise Barnard students will probably take any negative incident as confirmation of that belief, whereas another student might walk away from an encounter thinking “what a jerk” but not letting the one bad experience get in the way of her getting to know other people.