Freshmen should be selves, not screen names

Over the past spring and summer, a group of freshmen was so obsessed with coming to Rice that they flooded an online forum for the class of 2009. Out of a class of 750, approximately 200 joined the forum and inundated it with anxious posts on what to buy, what classes to take and what level math someone with a five on the AP Calculus BC test should take.

From this forum, I saw my first glimpse of what going to school with engineers and GPA freaks would be like. Did I like what I saw? The socialite party girl in me cringed at the thought of pocket protectors and Matlab. My inner dork— suppressed in high school — secretly squealed with glee at the prospect of jokes about Heisenberg’s uncertainty and Hamlet’s Oedipal tendencies.

Apart from the forum, there was also a Xanga blogring, a LiveJournal community, an Audioscrobbler group, a MySpace group, a College Confidential forum and Google, Friendster and Multiply groups. The last four are the only ones I was not in. This class was anxious indeed.

After getting to know each other’s e-selves all summer, it was finally time to set foot on campus, to the sound of our fellows’ effervescent exuberance and the cricket chirps drowning out the freshmen’s shock and awe. After prying us from our parents’ tearfully reluctant arms, we were plunged into the most lecture-filled summer camp ever. In the little free time they gave us, those of the Internet obsession frantically sought each other out. Although we were bursting with anxiousness to find our new friends, the Internet can be very deceiving.

Most of the people were shorter than I expected. Two people were taller. All were quieter and more shy. What had happened to these people who were so witty, so lively, through AOL Instant Messenger? I thought I knew them. Clearly I did not.

This was my first experience with the false bravado the Internet affords us. You can choose not to show pictures and instead describe yourself in the most self-indulgent and flattering of terms, or you can share only those pictures which hide the defects and accentuate the goodies. Without the pressures of real-time phone or face-to-face conversations, you have plenty of time to word clever comebacks. You can essentially re-create yourself, depending on your mood and who you’re talking to.

For kids who don’t know who or what they are yet, the Internet is the perfect tool to tweak and define who or what they think they should be. It can be empowering, but ultimately everyone reverts back to his or her real self, complete with defects and awkward silences.

And, of course, all the awkwardness wore off at Dis-Orientation, to be replaced by a little too friendly camaraderie. The fact that this drunken evening was the night people were their true selves highlights how people are not really comfortable with themselves or each other — not yet.

College is not just for education, but for personal growth. In addition to classes, intramurals and clubs, we are supposed to strive for an epiphany of who we are and what we want to be. We are supposed to grow — not just into ourselves, but into each other. Even for the GPA worriers shooting for President’s Honor Roll and those ambitious enough to strive for highly-connected internships, I hope this growth will be one of our main goals.

Allee Rosenmayer is a Wiess College freshman.

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