GRADE: A-

September 5, 2000

Being a freshman in college is like starting at the bottom of the ladder once again. You are among the youngest and most naïve people on campus and can easily be spotted because you seem uncomfortable and out of place in your new surroundings. It is strange coming to college after completing at least four years in the same school with the same people, friends and teachers and after living at home all your life surrounded by your room, your belongings, and your family. In college you must meet new people and, in a sense, start the whole high school process all over again. One of the first things that you do when you arrive at college is try to meet everyone that you possibly can and make friends as quickly as possible. The first few weeks of school is a time when people make rash judgments about other people because they have to find a group of about ten friends out of a possible two thousand freshman. Bronowski writes "we are constantly deceived about the nature of the outside world because we interpret it in terms of the built-in search mechanism". This applies to freshman in college because while they are making constant judgments about people, they must base these judgments on superficial qualities such as physical appearance, speech, and body odor. In this case, the fact that our eyes deceive us takes on a whole new importance namely that you can’t judge someone simply on their physical appearance. There exist many people in this world who may be deemed not worth knowing simply because they are not attractive enough, but who, as you learn when you spend time getting to know them, have very attractive personalities which then shine through to the exterior. I should also point out that there are also many people who have lovely exteriors but horribly ugly personalities yet this cannot be known simply by looking at them because our eyes deceive us and our knowledge of the outside world is faulty. However, simply the fact the human have acquired the knowledge that their eyes are faulty makes the process of getting to know other people a little less superficial because a person is more likely to spend more time talking to other people as opposed to passing rash judgments on them based on appearance.

The whole idea of language as a form of communication is also quite important in the college orientation process. Though there are many different ways to communicate with each other, humans use words to communicate ideas. I suppose that we could use grunts and gestures, and while some people do, it is simply not the most effective way of communicating. Bronowski talks about the delay in speech that humans have, "Indeed, we have a rather long delay period…this delay time in the circuit between input through the ear and output through the mouth. It is really the first thing that makes human response possible". This delay is especially important when meeting new people because it gives the listener time to formulate a response that is basic enough so that the chances of offending the speaker are minimal. The last thing that a person wants to do when meeting someone for the first time is insult them immediately as it tends to almost eliminate the chances of forming a relationship with that person. The only drawback to this delay is that if the delay is too long, a silence occurs and although there are two types of silences, comfortable and uncomfortable, when first meeting someone, it difficult to tell which silence is occurring. "Silence is one of the most interesting human reactions, and of course among human beings it does not necessarily signify danger." It is interesting that Bronowski said that silence "does not necessarily signify danger" because in a situation where you are talking to someone for the first time and they become silent for a period of time after you have said something, red lights begin flashing in your head and warnings go off signifying that there is great danger that you have seriously insulted the listener. That is the difficult thing about meeting new people, you can never be sure what their reactions to what you say can be and how long their "natural" delay is so that you do not know when to become worried that you have upset that person. It makes meeting new people very stressful because while language helps to make the situation easier, imagine trying to communicate with two thousand freshman who can only grunt and wave their arms at you, silence and intonation can make the situation come to a stand still. Bronowski discusses how human language has evolved so that we are better able to understand each other and as we meet new people in college, we evolve and better understand each other’s words and silences.