Going to college is a part of life that many young adults experience. This can be a very different and big change for many, especially when one has never been exposed to the many different types of people that are found on this earth. A variety of backgrounds and cultures can be found here at MTU. Just to give you an example of how college life calls for changes, little slices of my life have been extracted and for the first time put down on paper (and on the web). Hopefully these glimpses of my life will show the balance between the Mexican culture found in Texas and the culture found here in Michigan. In reading, the differences between where I grew up and what I have experienced here at MTU will become readily apparent.

I lived in Texas and finished my freshman year of high school there. I can say without hesitating that at least 99% of the population was Mexican and Mexican-American. At school, English was the official language. Needless to say, English was spoken most of the time, but most teachers knew Spanish, so the language would slip once in a while. When I was not in classes, Spanish was the preferred language by all the student body. Then I moved to Michigan!

My mother decided that Michigan was a better place for her children, away from the high crime and drug usage rate found back in southern Texas, so we moved to Suttons Bay. Here we were the minority—with very few, if any, Spanish speaking people. The move was very hard on me; I would not say it was culture shock because I had seen Michigan already and its people many times. It was the fact that I had left all my friends and family behind. I am a pretty shy person and to make new friends was not something I was looking forward to. I had this feeling that nobody would want to talk to me because I was Hispanic. I think it was more so that I did not talk to anybody than because of the students' friendliness that I did not make “Caucasian” friends.

I think I was resistant to making friends in Michigan because people were so different from the people I knew in Texas. In Michigan, they did not know or speak the Spanish language, did not listen to Spanish music, had different values and morals, and did not view Mexicans as being a part of the community here but as people that came up, worked as migrant workers, and then went back to where they came from. I guess my main setback was that I did not want to lose our Mexican traditions. However, every day that went by, more and more English was spoken in the house and more and more English music was being listened too as well. I had to find a happy medium where I could enjoy the advantages of both cultures (for example, a medium where I could enjoy both Spanish and English music).