Coming Together

People are accustomed to judge people since the moment they see them, even though we are told since we are young to “never judge a book by its cover”. I sympathies new students who go into a new school, especially mine. Customs in my school are very different than other: we tend to judge others by their appearance and nationality. You can see a clear line between those who speak Spanish as their native tongue and those who have English as their native tongue. This is something that is very remorseful, because as you get to know these other students you see how nice and how unique they are, in the sense they are not Colombian and hold other traditions and ideas, which we could all learn and accept. Still Colombian students still have difficulties incorporating foreigners into their groups, drawing a line between each other. I can’t hold only the Colombian students responsible for the line drawn between Colombians and foreigners, normally the kids that are coming into the school don’t want to be here in the first place. Which is reasonable, they want to be with their friends in their old city, this is a big issue because they limit themselves to socializing with others. After they know it they’re in one side of the line. As said in the Handbook of Epictetus: “Most importantly, therefore, try not to be carried away by appearance” (16.21). It’s normal to hang out with a group of friends, but to become a true school community we need to learn to accept others and integrate with each other, even though they might be different than ourselves.