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LeAsha Moore
Communication Theory
Comm 3870
David Tucker
Feb 7th, 2015
Expectation vs. Reality
In our society many people have different life options. After high school you can choose
to go into the work field, choose to serve the country, or continue in higher education. I choose
to continue my education in attend college. In high school we never had guidance counselors to
help prepare us for the transition from high school to college. In high school I had a mentor who
attended a historically black universities, she would tell us all these amazing stories about the
rich culture and heritage that comes with attending an HBCU. She made me eager for college, I
did so much researched on different HBCU and narrowed it down to which one I felt would fit
me best. Despite the many movies I saw about college and how exciting it would be, I knew not
to be naïve and think that college would be a breeze and I would be able to party all the time. My
expectancy of attending college was that I would make new friends, learn so much about the rich
heritage and culture, and enjoy the learning experience.
That summer I worked hard in preparation for my first year of college. I attended
Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach Florida, we drove seventeen hours for me to
attend the university. When I first arrived I expected to sign-in and get direction to the residence

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hall I would be staying in. But nothing went according to plan, the university couldn’t find me in
the system, and it took nearly four hours to re-process all information that I had previously
submitted months before. That very first encounter I had with the university caused me to
associate a negative violation valence with the school. The unorganized behavior did not sit well
with me or my family, especially since we were told that everything was handled prior to my
arrival. But I continued to give the school the benefit of the doubt.
I was excited to experience the true experience of college by having a roommate, living
on campus, going to events, getting to know my professors and learning more about the culture
and heritage of my school. After a few weeks and I was fairly adjusted to the school, I
experienced an incident that I wasn’t mentally prepared for: the different lifestyles of sharing
space with a roommate. When you apply for housing at college, they give you a check list of the
basic necessities to bring to college as your prominent survival tools, while living in the dorms. I
don’t believe my roommate looked at that list because she was completely unprepared. She often
times asked if she could use some of the items I had, for example she often used my microwave
or my television, and I didn’t mind because as a child you are taught “sharing is caring”. But at
one point it became uncomfortable, she began asking if she could use my personal items such as

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tooth paste, my hair products, and sometimes my clothes. I felt as if she was violating my
‘personal space expectations.’
It was a lot that I had to get adjusted to while attending the university. In high school we
were told that college was a serious place, which is when you must become a young adult and
take on the real world. I made it my business to arrive to class early, always turn in my
assignments on time, be respectful, and take advantage of the learning opportunity that was being
presented. Because I was conditioned and told that that was how a “college student” should act, I
expected other students to act the exact same way. But I was so wrong, students would come to
class late, they would come to class “high”, they would engage in side conversations. One thing
that made me extremely uncomfortable about the classroom setting at that school was that
students would blatantly attempt to argue with professors about their attendance or their
unsatisfactory grades that they earned! I didn’t understand it. I remember in one of my
production classes, many students always goofed off in this class, and one day I noticed myself
performing that same type of behavior, I had my phone out listening to music and texting as if I
wasn’t in school. I believe I was performing reciprocity behavior, I was doing similar behavior

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as my peers in the classroom although I knew better. I made it my business to always sit in the
front and despite what was going on I needed to pay attention to what the professor was teaching.
The Expectancy Violations Theory states that often time’s people expect or predict a
certain situation to happen a certain way but in reality it happens totally differently. My mentor
led me to believe that attending a historically black institution would educate me on my culture
and heritage, I expected to meet great leaders and learn new things. In reality it made me
uncomfortable, I felt my space was often violated by people trying to force me to accepted their
beliefs and force me to learn history that I really didn’t care to learn. In reality that wasn’t the
school for me, although I felt in the beginning it would have fit me so perfectly. My interaction
adaptation gave me a different perception of schools and the messages they intend to send vs. the
message that students actually receives. I now feel more comfortable at the university I am
currently attending. The learning experiences from my previous institution allotted me to come
into the university with a better understanding of how universities work, and more so what to
expect.

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