When I first came to Hollins in 2010 as a first year, I endured an immense jolt. Not only was I now attending a women’s institution, but I was seven hundred miles away from home and the community beyond school differed entirely from what I was used to. While much of the Hollins University population comes from Virginia, a many students still experience some level culture shock throughout their time on campus. Even just spending last summer in Arlington, Virginia, only a couple hundred miles away from Hollins, served as another shock for me. Some days I still struggle to understand why things are done the way they are and how to react in the appropriate way. As our students, first years especially, return home or travel to other places for Thanksgiving break and the upcoming winter break, these differences may affect them more acutely than in the past.
As I am beginning to prepare for life after Hollins, I’ve been considering a lot about what my living situation will be like. At the moment, I’m fairly certain about with whom I’ll be living, but the location is still a little bit up in the air and it could be anywhere from California to closer to my hometown in New Hampshire. This anxiety has made me examine how I feel about the Roanoke area more closely because it really is more different from New Hampshire than I realized. In addition to the vocabulary (It’s a “shopping cart” or a “carriage,” not a “buggy”; and if something is worth putting “very” in front of it, you might as well just say “wicked.”), the accents (I watched Good Will Hunting the other day just for the deeah old Bahstan accent), the food (Grits? Wasn’t that just a plot point in My Cousin Vinny? Here – just have a lobstah. And where are all the Dunkin’s? There are six in my town alone!), and the weather (Why are you all bundled up? It’s thirty degrees Fahrenheit – bathing suit weather!), there are always the little quirks you don’t expect.
New Englanders are kind of like cats. We don’t like a lot of attention until we want it.
For example, several times a day, people from the area who work on campus or grew up nearby wave to me, say hello, and smile in passing. This is complete madness to me. In New England, this doesn’t happen. For those of you who are from the South and ever travel to New England and wonder why people are not responding – it’s not them being rude or having a bad day, that’s just how we operate. I don’t know what it is that makes the South a generally more social organism than the North. All I know is I fumble and freeze up when anyone I don’t personally know performs this ritual when I’m just trying to get to class. I guess that’s what they meant by Southern Hospitality.
Wherever you may travel in your future, see if you can find out these things ahead of time. It’s no terrible life-altering tragedy if it just hits you, but sometimes it’s nice to know how things operate. And if you happen to wave to me in passing, remember I’m not being rude if I don’t wave back – like Lady Gaga, I was born this way.