I am on co-op this quarter. As with my other jobs, I have had to deal with many different kinds of people. I have worked, among other places, at a marina gas dock, at Wal-Mart, in a coal mine and as a co-op at General Electric.
It’s fair to say that I have dealt with wide portions of the socioeconomic spectrum. By and large, I have enjoyed most of the people that I have worked with and for.
But there have been a few people that I have worked with, for, and gone to class with that routinely amaze me in their short-sightedness and lack of understanding of others. I am not speaking of rednecks, as you might guess.
I am speaking of mostly upper-middle class, suburban- raised white kids. These kids and their lack of exposure to the harshness (you can mentally insert “realities of life”) many people face have what I call the “Suburban Syndrome”.
This is not necessarily to say that these kids are bad. This Suburban Syndrome is often a close-minded series of reactions that is brought about by not having been exposed to many things very different from what these kids are used to.
It is a fair to think that a lot of your neighbors and many of the students you share class with come from a relatively similar background. When you get outside of the sheltered bubble of your neighborhood and campus, however, this assumption is no longer valid.
People are different, are raised differently, are exposed to many different things and have remarkably different talents. Not everyone you will deal with in real life has a formal education, or was even necessarily interested in one.
While this lack of education is easy to look down upon, it is better to respect the differences for what they are, and not belittle people, overtly or otherwise, for not being as fortunate, “intelligent” or “successful.”
Another common reaction is to express sympathy because a person did not have the lucky breaks or access to the same resources that you did. This sympathy can easily be hypocritical and fake. It’s much better and can be very beneficial and rewarding to look beyond outward appearances and get a sense of the person inside the external.
This brings me to the hypocrisy of being nice (I really mean solicitous) for the sake of being nice. It’s another form of fakeness that people need to be careful of.
The hypocrisy of nice for the sake of nice won’t get you that far ahead in the long run. I don’t necessarily view it as a service if you decide to be nice to me.
While a large portion of people are truly nice, some people are only nice when they want something. It isn’t that hard to see through. If you like me, that’s great. But if you don’t like me, I’d rather you just be polite and leave me alone. Better yet, just leave me alone. It’s easier for both of us, and saves us all time.
Ultimately, for me, the social aspect of school is secondary to the educational experience. If you have other interests, that is fine by me, but I pay too much money to worry that much about what you think about me.
By and large, we college kids hardly know anything about anything that is of use outside of the classroom. We’re too young, and live in too protected of an environment. (Despite what you might have heard, college isn’t the real world. It’s halfway there at best.)
As such, to strut into a new environment with any sort of arrogance will not be greeted well. Humble confidence often is the best way to win people over and prove your value. But above all, an incredibly valuable character aspect one can have is genuineness.
Tim Root is a senior in mechanical engineering. Feel free to discuss your opinions with him, positive or negative, at [email protected].
