College, the great equalizer — at least that was my rather naive view of college when I was a first-year.
Like many students when they first enter college or receive their acceptance letters, I was elated. I felt validated that my work through high school paid off and that I ended up in a university surrounded by other peers who put in as much effort as I did. But I quickly realized how, in terms of knowledge and experience, my peers and I sometimes seemed oceans apart. At times, this gap made me feel left behind and ostracized. But the more I learned, the more I realized just that — I was learning.
When I got to GW, I accepted that I inevitably wouldn’t have the same level of academic, political or social comprehension as others, especially coming from a lower-income background and small town. But I still felt optimistic about college and how I would fit in. Back home in Calexico, California, I always felt a little out of place keeping up with the news and gobbling up whatever I read in and out of class — subjects that weren’t of much interest to many of my classmates. I thought that at GW, I would feel a little less out of place.
I was quickly proven wrong. Being in class or talking to my peers made me realize our vast differences — how much more they knew about the government, politics and literature and just how many internships or programs they had done before college. I’ll never forget one particularly embarrassing example from my first year, when someone asked me for my LinkedIn and I replied “What is that?” And when the 2022 midterm elections rolled around, I only knew some politicians’ names and basic agendas. Students would pepper me with questions about policies, and I was only able to answer a few. It felt exactly the same as your math teacher in high school telling you on the first days of class that you were already behind.
At first, I thought I had just happened to stumble upon an especially intelligent and capable cohort of people in the student body. But once again, I was wrong. In classes, it seemed that many classmates already knew whatever our professor was teaching. When we would have discussions, peers would approach subjects as if they were obvious. Before I mentioned in class that I didn’t know that now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio had used the Republican Party’s credit card for personal expenses almost a decade ago, one of my classmates whispered in my ear something like “Why are we even talking about this? It’s common knowledge.”
It was the same thing when it came to people’s career experience — my peers spoke about racking up hours as research assistants in high school, interning at the mayor’s office or working for their congressman, while I spent the years before college organizing pep rallies as part of my school’s student council.
After spending a good chunk of my time at GW feeling embarrassed and way behind, something dawned on me this semester during my Media, Politics and Government class as I looked down at the six pages of notes I had taken about President Donald Trump and the media. Even if I wasn’t previously familiar with certain facts or concepts that are supposedly common sense, I am still actively learning about them.
Yes, I may have come to GW knowing less than many of my classmates. But we are here to learn, not to merely reaffirm what we already know. When I stopped looking at classes and conversations as frightening opportunities that could expose my lack of existing knowledge, reading academic papers and sharing in class became more fun and productive. In fact, these opportunities were a guarantee that I was experiencing the power of higher education. If I end up learning about something that is “common sense” to many, then thank God I learned about that.
Now, when I hear what my classmates have to say about Trump’s actions or I learn something new about the 2016 presidential election, I jot it down in my notebook. I shouldn’t be wallowing in embarrassment or self-pity because I just learned something. That is, after all, the main reason why I and many others wanted to attend college.
When I lead the weekly meetings with The Hatchet’s editorial board and I learn something new about GW, I don’t sink into my seat and mentally beat myself up for not knowing this information as the newspaper’s opinions editor. The reason for having an editorial board is to take into account multiple perspectives.
Every time I go back home and answer questions about school, I realize that I do have a lot to share, whether it’s showing my brother my Hatchet stories or answering his questions about my thoughts on how the press handled something that week. Sometimes there’s still a disconnect between my interests and those of my family and friends, especially after learning so much more at GW. But that still serves as a confirmation that I am growing, and growth can be uncomfortable.
Maybe I wasn’t completely wrong when I thought about college as an equalizer. University is a place where, for the most part, we are given the same education and the same preparation for when we enter the real world. It doesn’t matter how little we knew or how out of place we felt during those four years — it’s about the person we’ve become once we receive our diploma.
Andrea Mendoza-Melchor, a junior majoring in journalism and mass communication, is the opinions editor.
