I felt a sense of community as I was making the transition into my first year of college. I believe an authentic community was eventually created in my freshman dorms, according to Peck's theory, but it took a while to reach this point. From an outside perspective, many stages occurred during the process.
In the first stage, pseudocommunity, everyone is moving into the dorms and making an effort to meet everyone on their floor. This is a very underdeveloped community because no one knows each other and are simply trying to get to know people they will be living with for the upcoming school year. The second stage is chaos. After a few days, students are beginning to form friend groups in the hall, personalities are beginning to shine through, and roommates are starting to realize they may not be a perfect fit after all. During this stage, students have gotten through the hard part of freshman year: making friends. People stop being nice to everyone and simply trying to get along because they have now scoped out their surroundings and found who they want to remain friends with. After this stage, a sense of organization begins to arise. RAs ensure that roommates are getting along by going over roommate agreements with them. Events are planned with the floor to keep everyone involved and friendly. During the third stage of developing a community, people are beginning to realize that high school is over, everyone is an adult now, and the silly drama is only making freshman year less enjoyable. Only after this realization can true, authentic community be created.
Not to say that conflicts never arose, but everyone was less hostile and more understanding of others. Having a mature outlook in certain situations can make a huge difference. There were many individuals in this specific community I was involved in- individuals with different personalities and different beliefs- but the community could now function cohesively as a whole. Everyone did not always agree and dissensus certainly arose in many situations, but problems could be resolved.
Hi Jackie. I can see how Peck’s theory relates to your experience and how overtime you went through each stage. After reading your post I realized that I went through a similar type of experience. When I went on my internship they gave us apartments with random roommates assigned to them. None of us really new each other but eventually we all got along and formed a family/community type atmosphere. Like you said conflicts did happen but everyone was able to come together and resolve any problems.
ReplyDeleteHi Jackie, my experience was the same freshmen year. It wasn't necessarily with me, but I seen problems arise throughout my dorm with others. Like you said, towards the end less problems would come up and people would have more of a mutual understanding and be able to work things out. A dorm is definitely a new experience for a lot of people and everyone needs to do their part to create a community that people can get along in for the year that they have to live in it.
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