<p>My roommate from summer orientation knelt by her bed at night to say her prayers. Being Jewish from NYC, I had never seen anything like that before.</p>
<p>no one famous, nor do I think anyone became famous</p>
<p>2 real hippies</p>
<p>lots of weed</p>
<p>greater concentration of white people than I expected. I’m white, but went to an inner city hs</p>
<p>roomie who comes home late and angry and announces “Well, that’s certainly the last time I’m dating a married man!”</p>
<p>Huh?</p>
<p>A student who was blind. A student who’d had polio as a child and walked with crutches. And a student from Rhodesia whose entire family was killed in the civil war.</p>
<p>
While I knew kids in elementary school with braces on their legs, grad school was the first time I met an equal (and good looking man!) who had polio braces.</p>
<p>A real live professional student. This guy was in his late 30’s and had been in college continuously since high school. He even lived in a dorm. The dude was a legend.</p>
<p>In my freshman dorm, in the same hallway, I met–for the first time–a girl who lived down the street from me at home. I’d seen her before, we went to the same church–but she’d gone to a private high school. Also, right across the hall from me, I met a girl from my own high school class. (It was a huge school–I didn’t even recognize her name.)</p>
<p>Who else? Preppies, JAPs, Spoiled Rich Kids from Chicago, People from New Jersey Who Gave Me an Everlasting Bad Impression of the State, Mean Sorority Girls, Frat Rats, Anorexics, Bulimics, Profs Who Smoke Dope and/or Sleep with Students, Openly Gay People, Somalians, Townies, Hillbillies Who Drink Pepsi/Mountain Dew for Breakfast, People Who Eat Grits. . .</p>
<p>Speaking of grits- I never met one in college- having grown up and attending college in NJ, I was completely unfamiliar with the term. My first experience was when I moved to Houston and went out for breakfast-I ordered bacon and eggs and was asked whether I wanted grits or potatoes. I remember looking at the waitress and asking, in all sincerity, what is a grit? She laughed at me. My new husband, now my same but old husband, was mortified. </p>
<p>I had also never met a “frontage road” until I came to Texas. We called them “on ramps” in Jersey. But once I got here, I kept seeing signs for them everywhere. For the longest time I thought they were roads named after some famous Texas hero (like Sam Houston) of whom I had never heard. I finally asked a friend- Ok tell me, who the heck was Frontage? Was he at the Alamo? My friend was astonished at my ignorance.</p>
<p>A girl who referred to the beach as “the shore”
A deaf girl
A girl who had an abortion during freshman year.
A girl who kept more drugs than food in the mini-frig.
A prof. who asked me out to dinner when I went to office hours for Chem. help.<br>
A prof. whose real name was Calvin Klein
People who thought hushpuppies were shoes
Nickel draft night</p>
<p>RE: Grits–The college I went to was only about 10 miles south (and 30 miles west) of my hometown. Somewhere in there lies the “Grits Line.”</p>
<p>I’m from the Northeast and went to college in the South. Hate to say this (and I do believe things have really changed since the 70’s), but that was the first time I’d heard people just casually refer to African-Americans as the n-word. Very shocking and disturbing to me.
Also met people who I had to explain what a bagel was and got the response “oh, like a donut” :)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That might have been me 
I also did not know what “barbecue” was. Where I come from, barbecue is a verb not a noun. But I love them both now…</p>
<p>Guess I should have thrown that one in too…People who thought barbecue was a verb :)</p>
<p>Someone who carried a firearm in his briefcase…:eek:</p>
<p>Someone who had a suitcase full of marijuana under his bed in the dorm. I had never seen any of it before and I was in a room with a bunch of people and he asked if we wanted to get high. I wasn’t even sure what he meant - very sheltered. He then pulled the suitcase from under his bed. I assumed that everyone who got high had that much. Right after that, I saw my first bong.</p>
<p>Open and unabashed anti-Semites.</p>
<p>LOL about barbecue. When I was in Dallas on business we went to Six Flags and I remember asking one of the concession workers “Barbecue what?” She looked at me like I was crazy. I don’t know what hush puppies are and am still unsure about grits too! (Native Californian here)</p>
<p>ready2010- grits are “hominy”. Don’t ask me what "hominy"is. </p>
<p>On the hush -puppy front. I am most familiar with them as a brand of men’s shoe, known for comfort and (at the time, style). They are generally suede, but the brand “Hushpuppies” did branch out into a variety of footwear options for men and women. I think they still exist. </p>
<p>On the food front, hushpuppies, in the south and southwest, are little balls of cornmeal with onions, fish, and other spices, deep fried and eaten as a side with fried crawfish, mostly, but also fried catfish or other fried seafood. If it ain’t deep fried, it ain’t a hushpuppy.</p>
<p>someone who grew marijuana in his closet (and was an apartment-mate of mine). BAck in the days when you didn’t worry about that being a problem.</p>
<p>Someone who made a suicide gesture necessitating half the police force coming to aforementioned apartment (same guy.)</p>
<p>Young people who drank alcoholic beverages.</p>
<p>At my high school, marijuana was much easier to obtain than alcohol. Lots of people smoked grass; nobody drank. I was shocked when I got to college to find out that young people drank.</p>
<p>I also met international students for first time. I remember that I had a lab partner from Nigeria in one class and a TA from Brazil in another. And I met quite a few Israelis through a friend who belonged to several Jewish cultural and religious organizations. The only “international” student I had met in high school was a girl who was a Canadian citizen but had lived in the United States since infancy and had no memory of Canada.</p>