I come from a predominantly Latino community back home and it felt strange coming to an environment that was completely the opposite.\u00a0At first I felt like\u00a0I was just a little brown dot in the center of a large white canvas. Everyone shared the same features, but I was the different one. My skin, my eyes, my hair, everything was different and at a certain point I didn’t know whether I was good enough or not. I felt like an outcast, but it didn’t take long to discover that there were many others who were just like me. There were different cultures, different backgrounds, different ethnicities and I felt less alone. The white canvas that I once saw was now filled with all sorts of different colored dots and I was convinced that I no longer needed to worry about being good enough because in the end, every color is beautiful.<\/p>\n
I quickly formed a friendship with a girl who I related to a lot, and from then on all my fears and insecurities went away. I was proud of who I was and where I came from; and I wasn’t going to let anyone make me feel inferior anymore. With this new mentality, I actually started to enjoy myself. Welcome week was a blast! I have never been given so much FREE STUFF IN MY LIFE!!! Free food, free T-shirts, free EVERYTHING!!! I literally have enough laundry detergent and\u00a0 M&Ms to last me all year!! I even got to see a drag queen show that would put a lot of girls to shame (I’m not even kidding! They walk better in heels than I do!).\u00a0From\u00a0drag queens\u00a0dropping it\u00a0like its hot, to\u00a0a hypnotist hypnotizing\u00a0students, and to a\u00a0comedian singing like a hobo, the shows\u00a0I saw were great! Welcome week is what made me see that the college life really is as awesome as people say. I just wish that every week was like the first week. I am now into my second week and there is work to be done. Good thing it’s almost the weekend and its not just ANY weekend, its Labor Day weekend! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
I was right when I thought\u00a0that UI\u00a0would be the perfect school for me because even though I had a rough start, I absolutely love it now! I came to UI wanting freedom,\u00a0independence, and of\u00a0course a good\u00a0time…that’s exactly what I got. I’m loving it here and I am looking forward to the next four years of the best years of my life.\u00a0<3<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I come from a predominantly Latino community back home and it felt strange coming to an environment that was completely the opposite.\u00a0At first I felt like\u00a0I was just a little brown dot in the center of a large white canvas. Everyone shared the same features, but I was the different one. My skin, my eyes, … Continue reading Just a Brown Dot Part lll<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campuslife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/reina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/reina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/reina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/reina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/reina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/reina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31,"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/reina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions\/31"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/reina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/reina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/reina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}