I think that there are group norms wherever you go in life, whether it be school, work, church, or in your own group of friends. In all honesty, I don’t interact with a lot of people at San Jose State; meaning I don’t hang out with friends on campus, or, in reality, have any “school” friends. All of my friends are outside of school. Wow, that sounds kind of sad.
Anyway, I don’t think that I can answer fairly whether I see norms at SJSU. My interaction is limited to that of the classroom, and I’m actually only on campus for 2 hours on Tuesday and Thursday.
Now, when it comes to my friends that I hang out with, we absolutely have norms. It’s normal for us to be touchy-feely with each other, but if someone new comes into the group, we reserve that right until we get to know them better. While we don’t have any “explicit” norms (that would be odd in our group) we do have “implicit” norms; whenever we have a get together, we ask what we should bring, what the host needs help with, etc.
These norms were fairly easy to adapt to. They went along a lot with what morals
I was raised with as a child: help out, don’t be rude, be honest, so on and so forth. This
group of friends have probably been the best that I’ve ever been a part of, simply for the
fact that they can relate to how I am as a person, and my norms are similar to theirs.
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Hello Nessa,
ReplyDeleteFirstly, I wanted to start by saying, it is not at all sad that you don't have any friends at SJSU. I don't think most people do, unless of course you happen to live in the dorms. SJSU is a total commuter school and especially when you take night and online classes, people just go to class and then go home. Socializing is not even on the agenda. Anyway, I found it interesting that you brought up the point that your friends norms are similar to that of the ones you grew accustomed to growing up. I think for the most part, people tend to gravitate towards people who share the same ideas and have the same values because they find that it is easier to get along with them if they have the same standard of norms. I don't think there really is anything wrong with that, unless of course you try to impose your standard of norms onto other people.