Extracurricular events

1. The first extracurricular event I attended was the field trip to the Food Co-Op. I wasn't sure what to expect--I had never even heard of a Co-Op before. Turns out, it was basically Trader Joe's on steroids. The whole store is locally funded, and sells ONLY organics foods. They have foods that cater to every allergy, and flavored jams from fruits you've never even heard of. They had locally grown vegetables that literally looked just they had JUST been pulled up from the earth. I ended up buying some organic strawberry lemonade, but it tasted kind of weird.

The woman who was introducing us to the Co-Op had gnarly dreads and tattoos, but you could tell she was incredibly bright. She was super passionate about saving the environment, and told us about how the Co-Op almost got shut down a couple years ago because it was underfunded. She encouraged us to buy food from the Co-Op in order to live a healthier lifestyle.

2. The next event I went to (besides the majors and minors fair) was the Roommate Game. My roommate, Joanna, and I had been studying up for it all week. When we sat at lunch in the DLG we would bounce questions off of each other: What's your favorite color? What's your favorite song? What's your pet peeve? As it turns out, this was helpful for the game. As we got further in, we realized we were getting more questions correct than any of the other roommate couples. In fact...we won! We both got $25 gift certificates to the University Center (which I actually just spent on books yesterday). I couldn't believe that she remembered that my pet peeve was Mufasa dying in the Lion King! They RHA also provided us with snacks, chips, cookies, and milk. We all ended up having a lot of fun that night, and it was a great study break from midterms!

3. My final event was the "Get a Life" game. This was eye-opening. Nobody understood what was going on at first--we were handed different colored cards as we entered the room, and then immediately told to go around to different tables that were stationed in the room and "build our lives." There were different tables being manned by RAs, each with labels such as Education Level, Housing Situation, Spirituality, etc. We had to go to these tables and request what we wanted from them. After a while, we caught on that the RAs were treating us differently depending on the color of our card. I even got sent to "jail"! Apparently, they were each meant to represent a different ethnicity. I had a red card, which meant I was Latina. The RAs were acting, of course, but it was so peculiar to feel discriminated against based on Latina and Chicana stereotypes. As a caucasian female, I've never had to endure that. I will definitely be more sensitive from here on out.