<p>Thanks sewbusy.</p>
<p>My son is very happy at U Michigan. He is in a small program – Jazz Studies, School of Music – at a very big school. He has bonded with the five other freshmen who live at the end of the hall (two doubles, 2 singles, all share one bathroom, which they are responsible for cleaning…). He finds the school very friendly; has made friends from the music school and beyond. He loves Ann Arbor. He is currently home for fall break and we are heading out to buy him a down jacket. The winter weather may be a less appealing element of UM. But so far, so good.</p>
<p>Quite without his permission, I’m going to quote a small piece of an email that WashDadJr sent to his grandparents this morning:</p>
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<p>He hasn’t sounded that happy about school since the third grade.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I’ve seen pictures on his Facebook that don’t look much like WashDadJr. There aren’t supposed to be many women at his school, and we certainly didn’t expect to see online pictures of them clinging to our son… In a school without women, three of his closest pals are female. It’s that old Wash charm, I guess.</p>
<p>Oldfort said:</p>
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<p>My daughter is at the same university, and is also doing fine (though I would not describe her as incredibly happy), but she has made some different comments.</p>
<p>She finds the diversity lacking and is disappointed that racial and ethnic groups self-segregate far more than they did in her high school. She often feels that she is surrounded by “white bread” types – an odd experience for a kid who came from a very diverse area. </p>
<p>She has actually lost a little weight because of all the walking (plus, her schedule forces her to miss some of those excellent meals).</p>
<p>She does not party hard, has never been to a frat and doesn’t understand why anyone would want to go to one, but she has found people to spend time with and usually finds something to do on the weekends – usually, going to campus events or watching DVDs with a crowd of people in somebody’s dorm. She has also found an extracurricular activity that she likes, but she had to find it – it didn’t find her. </p>
<p>She would agree that it’s not the most nurturing place, but since she detests having people hover over her, she would probably consider that a plus. And she loves her single.</p>
<p>My son goes to a mid sized school and lives in a small dorm. He has found it easy to make friends and find activities that interest him.Also all his classes are under 20 students so that also makes it easier. He is having a great time and I am sure doesn’t share 80% of what he is actually doing.
Interestly something I have seen happen over and over is the kids who ended up at one of the large state universities. This is a big party school that lots of kids want to attend. Every year I hear of kids who are unhappy and finding it hard to make friends. Once they start to look at making a large school smaller for the most part the blues go away. But they do have to be willing to step outside their comfort zone.</p>
<p>Marian - That is so funny, 2 kids at the same school with different views on diversity. My daughter went to a very white high school, same social economic background, so Cornell is very diversified. I guess everything is relative.:)</p>
<p>Everything is indeed relative. My daughter, who is white, went to a high school that was about 40% white, with the other 60% pretty evenly divided among African Americans, Asians, and Hispanics. Her two closest friends at home are a Hispanic girl (who is also at Cornell) and an Asian girl (who is at a different university). Her view of Cornell must be dramatically different than your daughter’s.</p>
<p>My is this an issue? If there are kids from all over the country and the world, what difference does it make what color their skin is?</p>
<p>I think marian’s point was that her D was used to more of a “mix” of people who didn’t seem to care about skin color, and the D seems, from HER persepctive, that at her college, there is LESS diversity than she had before, and the kids seem to self segregate</p>
<p>It is great that there are kids from all over, but if they don’t interact much, it doenst mean a whole lot</p>
<p>I have a niece who is a freshman at a private school in the Boston. She’s from the midwest family of modest means she says the dividing lines at her school have more to do with money than color.</p>
<p>citygirlsmom has it exactly right.</p>
<p>If kids from different backgrounds don’t mix, you lose something. At some colleges, as Sarahsmom42 says, the self-segregation may be economic, at others it may be racial, at others it may be Greeks vs. non-Greeks, and at others it may be based on schools within the university (i.e., all the engineering students hang out together and don’t interact with the humanities people). I think the kids would learn more if there were more mixing, but I suppose you can’t force it.</p>
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<p>This hadn’t struck me until just now, but an opportunity for LESS diversity might be a strength of college for some kids. WashDadJr is an extremely bright kid with a sharp sense of humor and a love of technology and science. There were, at most, five other kids at his high school like him. Some of the bright kids were into other things, didn’t like games or robots, or were in some other way just not likely to become his friend. The kids who were his friends for one reason didn’t match his other passions. He had “game friends,” or “robotics friends,” or “Scout friends” but he hasn’t had a “best friend” since we moved to Washington. </p>
<p>Now that he’s in a technical college he is – for the first time – in an environment where he fits in. He doesn’t have to explain himself, he isn’t weird, and he doesn’t have to be shy about his intelligence (you don’t want to be too bright in the average public school). The lack of diversity where it really matters – in personality, outlook and interests – is a lot more important to him than the fact that his school is widely “diverse” in terms of cultural and economic backgrounds. He’s had 12 years of “diverse” school and now he’s blossoming in an environment that is full of people like him.</p>
<p>I don’t know what this observation means. I’ve only been living with it for five minutes now and don’t have all the implications sussed out yet.</p>
<p>That’s it for my son, WashDad–he is happy to have kids from more cultures, etc. but he is ecstatic that most of the students understand what he is talking about and actually want to talk about ideas. Eureka!</p>
<p>I agree with CGM that it helps to have kids from different backgrounds and geographic regions. </p>
<p>This is the true representation of America. If these kids don’t learn to relate to different people in Colleges/Universities, when will they learn to relate to them? When they graduate and they have to report to an Asian or AA boss? It’s too late then. Your foundation is already built up and will take some work to reconstruct.</p>
<p>The workplace is getting more and more globalized today. On my Clinical team, the Lead MD on the project worked in Switzerland, my Statistician was Chinese, my Data Manager was in France, and my Investigators are American and Canadian. I am originally from India (1st gen immigrant), the clinical study director. The MRIs from our trial were evaluated and results stored from India via global databases. This diversity in my team was actually a strength of my team. We teleconferenced daily and met at least 3-4 times a year. </p>
<p>I would never have learnt as much about the French, Swiss, and the Chinese if my entire team were from US. The business world is becoming global. For those who resist this change, it will be a very tough change to accustom to.</p>
<p>So, I say - Ride the wave of the change, folks!</p>
<p>That economies of China and India is growing at double digit rates. These countries are going to be major contributors to US economy in the next decade. They will be the buyers of our US goods! Says, Thomas Friedman who wrote ‘The World is Flat’. </p>
<p>Therefore, working with people from diverse backgrounds not only affects IT, Business, IR, Clinical Research, Fashion, Arts, Film industry and so on…</p>
<p>SOrry! Typos–… I meant ’ The economies of India and China are growing…'</p>
<p>My son expressed similar sentiment. He said it was wonderful watching Family Guy and House and having EVERYONE know who Stephen Hawking was and all about Shroedinger’s Cat so they got the reference on House. </p>
<p>However, the way others mean diversity his situation is diverse. He has a multi-racial, multi-ethnic and international entry, and one of the young women is even from Williamstown (he goes to Williams) as is promising them all a homecooked meal! </p>
<p>The school reduced the diversity by putting two Davids next to each other (I’m convinced on purpose), and the boys have handled by introducing themselves thus, “Hi, we’re David.” So I would say there a lack of diversity in first names on his hall. LOL. They also seemed to have clustered a bunch of kids of CA.</p>
<p>"I think its important to recognize that almost every student loves the school he or she is attending, especially first semester of freshman year. "</p>
<p>Not necessarily true. Most of my friends and I disliked our first semester of college, yet stayed, graduated and eventually grew to love and appreciate our college.</p>
<p>I know recent students at the college where my husband teaches who disliked their first semester of college: Adjustment was difficult for them because of leaving the shelter of home or having to adjust to a totally new environment and make new friends. By the end of freshmen year, however, they’d found friends and activities that they enjoyed, and were happy.</p>
<p>Northstar,
I hear this all the time. My sister’s son went to private school all the way from K-12 with the same group of kids. He literally knew everyone in his class of 189 when he graduated. Now that he’s at college, he finding that his friend making skills are a little rusty! He’s been calling home saying things like “Everyone here already knows each other” (He lives on a floor with many of the guys on the football team)and “None of the girls are very cute!” (Ridiculous!) Interestingly enough, all three of his sibs had similar complaints their first semester, but eventually got aquainted and ended up loving it.</p>
<p>Interesting WashDad. My D has expressed some similar sentiments. Although she goes to a school that draws students from all over the country and the world, one of the things she likes about it is that she doesn’t feel “smart” at college, she feels normal - everybody is smart, some more so than she, some less. Interests that made her odd in high school are normal.</p>
<p>The thing that I have noticed is that depite the fact the kids come from many different places, they are more alike than they are different.</p>
<p>“The thing that I have noticed is that despite the fact the kids come from many different places, they are more alike than they are different.”</p>
<p>Cangel, Yes. Agreed that they are more alike than different. However, when kids from diverse backgrounds come together and work on any topic, they bring with them quite different experiences, different outlook, often different aspects, however subtle or significant.</p>
<p>I can not imagine studying law, political science, journalism, human rights (or lack thereof) for example, without having input from students who have lived in various parts of the world and bring their “learned experiences” to these discussions. I think the depth and breadth of such intellectual pursuits are exponentially enriched with input from diverse experiences.</p>
<p>Even in Medicine, I find that groups located in UK vs those located in Asia bring different expertise to the brainstorming sessions. Stem cell research for example is taking off way faster outside of US and therefore, even Scientifically, in next decades, much knowledge will come from outside the boundaries of US. I find these discussions most invaluable. Couldn’t imagine having such discussions with only local expertise.</p>