Reaching Out To Near And Far

Reaching Out To Near and Far

North America has often been characterized as the world's biggest melting pot. Whether or not this is true, there are still hundreds of different cultures and communities with our country. This made choosing a single community so much more difficult, so I decided to choose the Puerto Rican community. I chose it mostly because I am very intrigued by this community, but it is also present very close to me. I would love to learn more about what goes on within this culture so I can better my personal knowledge as well as find a better way to interact with the people close to me.

I come from a predominantly white middle-class suburb outside of Boston so my interaction with the Puerto Rican community has been fairly limited thus far. That being said, there was a small handful of Puerto Rican students at my high school. During high school, I was a three season athlete, and it was during these sports that I first interacted with people from this culture. I then moved on to college and found that there were often many Puerto Rican students in my classes here at the University of Connecticut. My second semester at UConn, I pledged a fraternity. Specifically, I can think of only one Puerto Rican brother since the time I pledged. I always got along with him, but we never truly bonded for reasons I still do not understand. Fortunately, he moved into my house over the summer, so I have a chance now to build the bridge that I should have built three years ago.

There are a couple of reasons why I want to build a bridge with the Puerto Rican community. First, I would love to grow closer to my new roommate. We already share a bond of brotherly love that comes from being in a fraternity, so building this bridge should be a little easier. I have also always been very intrigued by the Puerto Rican Community because the people within this culture seem extremely proud to be part of it. Maybe I have taken my personal community for granted, but I have never felt this extreme sense of pride. This will hopefully be a way for me to learn more about the Puerto Rican community, as well as inadvertently learning how to be proud of where I come and who I am.

There is really only one main fear that I have about this mission I am about to undertake. I can only think of one time in my life where I was absolutely considered the minority. It was a very unnerving situation for a lot of different reasons, and this definitely makes me a little anxious about what is about to come. I want to make the effort, though, not just to rely on my friend for information about the Puerto Rican community, but to get out and really see what this culture is all about. The best way to do this locally is to go to the Puerto Rican/Latin American Cultural Society located here at UConn. This will give me the opportunity to meet a variety of people from this community as well as a way to help assuage