It's easy to only talk to your group of friends, or people with whom you are in direct contact. It's easy to pass up a conversation with a stranger because you have a test to study for or because it's outside of your comfort zone.
But you can be entertained, surprised, amused and learn so much just by talking to people with whom you wouldn't think of associating. In the past month, I've gotten to know workers at Thayer Street sandwich and pizza shops, artists, students from Wesleyan University and the Community College of Rhode Island, Lower East Side residents, a homeless couple, a highway worker, two men who sell wooden giraffes and jewelry on the weekends, a woman who manages two group homes, the custodian in my hall and Brown Dining Ser-vices workers.
There was the lad in front of the Brown Bookstore who was offering passersby a free handshake that "qualifies you for a hug later." While some people avoided eye contact and others made excuses like "I have leprosy," I took the handshake and talked to him, a conversation that has since led to a friendship.
Then there was the character on Thayer Street who told me, "I like girls who are intelligent. Maybe we can get together and meet at a coffee shop and talk about psychology. I'm also having a costume party in a few weeks if you want to come." Sure, I go to Brown - I'm brilliant and I spend my life discoursing in le shops de café. Yes, I'll go to your party as a pretentious intellectual and quote Sartre.
Other conversations have touched upon more serious issues. When I'm in class or eating at the V-Dub, I'll forget that the universe isn't a safe, intellectual paradise flowing with ideas, books and make-it-yourself waffle batter. I'll be more upset by the C I got on my test and the cold stare my floormate gave me than by genocide in Sudan or economic inequities in Providence. It's hard to be concerned about issues I don't see or experience save through black-and-white photos and words and theories supported by ideals and charts with numbers. It's hard to relate to an issue if I don't know anyone who is affected by it. But when a security guard at the SciLi told me about how he used to live in a shack in Cape Verde and hardly had enough food to survive, I actually felt sympathy for his impoverished friends. I could pin a specific face onto the theories in print.
And I've even broadened my perspective by opening up to Brown students who aren't on my floor or in my classes. I've learned about group independent study projects on dinosaurs, house parties with pirate ships and political internships in Providence. I've been dragged to meetings for the Ivy Film Festival, debate, salsa dancing and the Brown Policy Review. I've heard arguments for the most true form of capitalism and the most true form of socialism. I've heard about how athletes, artists, hipsters, hippies, geeks, Greeks, first-years, seniors, graduate students, professors, alcoholics and workaholics see the student body, the school, broader societal issues and their own lives.
College is about learning, but your education doesn't just come from academic material. It comes from learning how to relate to all different types of people. It comes from listening to others' stories and interacting with worlds outside of your immediate one.
If you don't expose yourself to a variety of lifestyles and perspectives, you will not be able to understand other people and you will only know of so many ways to think and live yourself. Getting A's so you can get into law school, getting A's in law school, trying to get promoted as a lawyer, living in an upper-middle class suburb with two kids and a minivan, getting promoted and then dying in front of "Wheel Of Fortune 2065" in your assisted living home - is a life like that one you want to live?
If you don't expose yourself to the world outside of Brown, you won't be able to truly understand or make meaning out of what you're learning while you're here.
So get out there already.
Anna Aufseeser '09 loves speed-dating.
