Having a College Roommate - Essay Example

12 November Assignment College is an exciting new step in every world and getting accepted into the college of one’s choice in order to study and build a career on the same lines is a dream that most diligent people are able to achieve. Going to college involves an entirely new experience of meeting new people, living with people belonging to different nationalities and making friends from all walks of life. College is an institution that has a great amount to offer to every human being. Most colleges have on campus residences for people coming from outside and students are allotted rooms on a sharing basis with usually one or two more roommates. Having a college roommate can be both a wonderful as well as nightmarish experience because one never knows who they will be paired up to live with. However, in some cases, people can even choose their roommates and get their contact information in order to get to know them better even before college starts. In such cases, it is beneficial for people to choose college roommates from other countries. In order to be able to absorb the ultimate college experience, it is important to have an open mind and broaden one’s horizon with respect to thoughts and ideologies. When one enters college, his main aim is to achieve a good career as well as have an excellent academic response. Every parent would also want their children to have an excellent experience at college because of the high fees that they might be paying and obviously would want to watch their children succeed. Along with this, they would want their children to mix with people coming from good backgrounds that might end up having a good influence and impact on them. Finally, every parent as well as student would want a roommate who would benefit him or her even with regard to his education. Thus, having a roommate belonging to a different country or a nationality has proven to be very fruitful with a number of people with regard to their education in the ways that have been discussed within the scope of this paper. Most college roommates turn out to be lifelong friends because spending time with them becomes an inevitable part of college life. Even if the roommate does not share all the same classes, one cannot help but meet him or her every time you are in the room spending time, or studying. Thus, having a good friend belonging to a different nationality and culture can be extremely helpful in trying to learn new things. A roommate from another country will bring the scope for learning a new language, trying different cuisines and opening up to a whole new culture a lot easier. Furthermore, if one becomes really good friends with the roommate, then one may also travel to his or her country and be exposed to a different way of living altogether. All this helps a student’s education because it exposes him to newer thoughts and ideas and also gives him the chance to travel and study more. All this provides for a very wholesome experience. People belonging to different nationalities follow different religions and have faith in different things. This can also help a person to broaden their horizons and adapt newer cultures into their lifestyle. The roommate might also be good at certain subjects or a different language and might make it easier to teach them at the same time. He or she might even have a good influence because of their values and morals. For example, having an Asian college roommate can be extremely beneficial because they are usually good at subjects like math and calculus, and furthermore, their food habits are very different and they may just open up a whole new variety of eating for someone who has them as their roommate. This example is a very stereotypical one, however, it must be understood that the main aim is to gain knowledge and being with someone belonging to a different national altogether will help a person gain knowledge because of the difference in thought and opinion. It also becomes easy to take part in exchange student programs if one has a college roommate belonging to a different nation. This is because most exchange programs accept students who are willing to stay in each other’s homes and gain an entirely different enriching academic experience. Being roommates with someone belonging to a different country can help to speed up the process as the family members will also be comfortable in playing host to someone who already spends all their time with their children. This adds to a student’s curriculum vitae and helps him become worldly and accepting of a number of things in life. Having a roommate from a different country helps to spread a vast amount of culture around, for example, one can take tips from the roommate in order to keep the room clean and decorate it. They might help to provide ideas from how they do things back in their home countries. This entire exercise also helps to provide a person with a way to share their own thoughts and ideas about their home countries, and helps them to be patriotic, feel pride for their nation and express their own thoughts. It thus helps to inculcate within a person love for their own home towns as well. It makes them understand the meaning of belonging somewhere and provides a sense of affiliation and happiness. One can also learn the responsibility of trying to uphold the values and morals that they learn from home when they come to live in different countries. Much the same way, having a roommate from a different country helps to prove beneficial as well. The roommate might have a different outlook on everything and provide a different perspective on life altogether, however, it could be something to learn from because he might just have a very interesting take on life which may instil faith in a person. It is easy to learn about different kinds of food because it is important in life to be able to adjust to eating different things. If a person is accustomed to different kinds of food then he will be able to travel everywhere and be able to adjust to different settings without craving for a single type of food. Having a roommate from another country is beneficial in this way to a student’s education because education involves travelling and if one wants to take up higher studies in a different country then he should be prepared about aspects like eating. Thus one learns how to cook different meals, use various spices and other materials that might not be available easily etc. Networking is one of the main aspects of having a roommate from a foreign country. This is a very vital point to note because higher education should only be done by the best preferred university of a student. Since a person only gets a single shot at getting into the college of their choice, wherever it might be, it is important to understand the culture and habits of that other country. A student might be lucky to have a roommate from a country that he or she might want to live in or study in, in the future. They will help the student in getting to know more people, places etc so that it becomes easy for the student to travel and interact with others from that country later on. In today’s day and age of networking, it has become extremely easy to meet people and understand their wants and needs. Works Cited Black, Emma. "Characteristics of a Good Roommate."eHow.com. N.p., 3 Mar. 2011. Web. 12 Nov. 2011. . Read More