When I came to college, I experienced somewhat of a culture shock. I come from a small town in Maine and there isn’t a lot of diversity there. When I decided to go to New York for college, I knew I would be in a different environment but I didn’t know that I was going to meet so many different people from different backgrounds.

(Back row left to right) Sarah, Sweta, Nicola, DeAnna (me!) (front row) Shimira, Brittany.

Freshman year, I was more in shock with Manhattan itself. I explored the city a lot and even tried to find my way around alone. It wasn’t until my sophomore year that I experienced true culture shock. I had been put in random housing, not by choice, and got placed in a suite with five other girls. I was only aware of four of them at first and I looked them up on Facebook and added them as friends. Seeing their pictures, I thought they were all black. I was excited because I never really had any black friends before because, like I said, Maine is statistically the whitest state in America.

I was nervous to meet them because I was worried they weren’t going to like me. Move-in day came, and one by one I introduced myself to them. They were all nice. After the first couple of weeks, I got to know them better and learned that two of my suitemates weren’t black at all. One was from India and the other one was Guyanese. I had no idea what that meant at first. I had no idea there was such a thing as “brown” people.

The more I got to know my suitemates, the more I learned about different aspects of their culture. It was also the first time I had ever tried Indian food, which I fell in love with. My favorites would have to be samosas and chicken tikka masala. I would rather have that than a cheeseburger or a lot of other “American” foods out there. I never knew what Bollywood movies were, either. For those of you who don’t know, ‘Bollywood’ movies is the term used for Hindi-language film industry and are usually very long, three, sometimes four hours.

Other than food and entertainment, I learned about the lifestyle in their culture, too. With my suitemate from India, a lot of her family lives together, even still. She lives with her cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents. That’s something that was very new to me. They have very high family values. I’m not saying I don’t, but they see their family a lot whereas I see my extended family every Thanksgiving and Christmas.

My other two suitemates were black and from Queens. They also taught me a lot of different things about their culture. One of them, Nicola, is now my roommate. Nicola introduced me to step. She’s been stepping since she was 8 years old and I had never heard of it in my entire life time. She’s on the step team at the university, and I make sure I go to every one of her shows. I love the feeling I get when I go; the spirit is so high and I get a chill like I’m a part of something bigger than myself, bigger than all of us. It’s like we’re all connected for just one night and no one can take it away.

Living with them for over a year, I’ve come to appreciate different cultures. There is so much more I learned from them that would be impossible to put all down on paper. I strive to know as much as I can about them because I’m tired of being ignorant. In Maine, I was as ignorant as you can get. The truth is, a lot of people are racist even still. That racism is because of ignorance. I didn’t want to be like that. These girls are some of the best people I know. They’re just like everyone else and where they come from and their skin color should make no difference. They have made the biggest difference in my life; they have changed me for the better. I can’t imagine what my life would be like today if I had never met them.

My advice to anyone who may be going off to a city or far from home is to embrace the diversity. After all, the world is full of people so different from ourselves. They have a lot they can teach us. Try and get to know a different culture or teach other people yours. From the way I see it, we have these cultures not only to live by, but to share.

-DeAnna