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» Culture shock: Getting to know CoMo
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Four students tell their stories about adjusting to their new college home.
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By Evan Townsend, Hank Koebler, Kristin Torres and Ryan Shiner
Published July 6, 2011 E-mail this article
Prepare for kindness
Last week, I approached the cashier at Berkeley Bowl grocery store in Berkeley, Calif., with
*Aug. 26
my produce and a smile. As he rang me up, he avoided eye contact at all times, never
Particle, Zappy LaReel
breaking sacred eye union with my vegetables. I waited for an opportunity to say, “Hi, how
are you?” or some other variant of polite small talk, but nothing. 8:30 p.m., Aug. 26, The Blue Note
$15 admission
I immediately blamed myself. How could I have been so stupid? He can tell I got the non-
organic tomatoes from Mexico instead of the locally grown ones from the homeless *Sept. 29
cooperative, not to mention that I didn’t get the cage-free eggs. MOVE Magazine presents The Wood Brothers and
Clay Cook at Mojo's
Then it hit me. “Oh no,” I thought. “He’s a vegan, and he hates me now.” I looked to the 8:00 p.m., Sept. 29, Mojo's in Columbia (1013
customers behind me in line and noticed they had brought cloth grocery bags, then looked Park Ave.)
back to the cashier as he was stuffing my purchases into paper ones. There was no time to
Admission is $15. This event is part of MOVE's
explain that I was just in town for the week, that I usually bring cloth bags when shopping
fall concert series.
back home, and that at least the yogurt was organic. It was too late.
Now that I look back, he probably didn’t hate me at all. He was just a real Californian, just
like I used to be before Missourians perverted my sensibilities. In Missouri, the cashier at
Root Cellar not only says hi at the register, she says hi when she recognizes me on the street. Keep it cool with these summer essentials
In Missouri, strangers offer to drive you to the liquor store or to get food so you won’t have to End of the summer playlist
wade in 18 inches of snow to get there, then drive off mysteriously afterward without asking Beyonce’s 4 doesn’t live up to its epic title
for a tip or a beer.
Radio killed the real music star
They wouldn’t do that in the Golden State, and not just because there’s no snow anyway or Culture shock: Getting to know CoMo
because no one’s dumb enough to get in a car with a stranger. It’s because in California,
people are too cool, too busy or too afraid you’re secretly a junkie waiting to shank them and
take their money to help anyone. Back home, people don’t say, “God bless you,” when they
ask for spare change and you don’t have any like they do in Missouri. They just curse at you
or spit on your Prius.
Though it may sound strange, I appreciate this shared language of Californians — but that
doesn’t mean I don’t look forward to eye contact and small talk when I’m back in Missouri at
summer’s end.
kristin torres | senior staff writer
A country boy in Columbia
As the curtains open, I’m entering my middle school for the first time. I’ve just moved to this MOVE reporter Jiaxi Lv searches for MU
tiny stain on the map, so I’m more than a little nervous, but it helps that I see a few students students’ plans for Valentine's Day and their
in the corner swapping cards. This is back when Pokémon were all the rage, so my excited thoughts on the holiday. Voiceover by Sam Lin.
10-year-old self thought he was about to make some new friends. (View video)
Prepare for disappointment, little me. It wasn’t Caterpies or Machamps they were trading,
but John Deere and International Harvester. Tractor trading cards — I had no idea such
ungodly things existed.
Cut to scene two. It’s about seven years later and I’m at MU, where my class alone is six times

2. the population of my hometown. The diversity, the opportunity here — it’s all so pleasantly
overwhelming. I know many of my classmates grew up under the shadows of skyscrapers, yet
the tallest structure near me was my neighbor’s silo. (And when I say, “neighbor,” I mean the
person who lived about a mile down the road.)
I’m still grappling with the fact that there are actually fun things to do in Columbia, when
back at home, the wildest time we could have was a scavenger hunt in the local grocery store
for the oldest perishable food items. (Current record: a bottle of salad dressing that had been
expired for four years.)
Sure, it’s not a perfect ending to the story. I miss having uninterrupted time, when a hole in
cell phone reception was just a bike ride away. I miss all the stars I could see on a clear,
warm night.
But those small sacrifices are worth the things I get from being here. I no longer consider
three cars on a road within the span of fifteen minutes “mild traffic.” I’ve learned that not all
towns just shut down at 9 p.m. Heck, most nights I don’t go out until after 10 pm.
After living nine years downwind from a turkey farm, even the air here is a blessing.
Columbia is nothing like the place where I spent most of my recallable childhood, but I’ve
learned to call it home.
evan townsend | reporter
From Chicago to CoMo.
In Columbia, you will meet people from different parts of the country (and sometimes the
world). Not only will you hear their stories, but you will also get to share and experience
Columbia with your newfound friends.
Coming from the Chicagoland area and having traveled to different areas of the country, I
had some sort of an idea of what to expect when I made my way to Missouri. But there are a
few things that really stuck out to me, and hopefully this knowledge will make your transition
a little easier.
One thing that jumped out at me was the music scene. Many people are really into country
and indie. This didn’t really occur to me until I started walking aimlessly around the area
and noticed that some of the local venues had fliers stapled that featured country and indie
shows.
Another big give-away is the amount of people who dress like they are from the 1940s letting
you know that they listen to indie music, and the amount of girls singing Keith Urban songs.
The “scenes” that I had experienced prior to this were pop punk, hardcore screamo and a
bunch of bands that really liked classic rock — an interesting change of setting, to say the
least.
Something else that makes Columbia different from the Chicagoland area is the pizza. This is
not meant to speak poorly of the pizza in Columbia or any of the local pizza places, but
Chicago pizza is just better. When you are hanging out with people, for some reason they will
drool at the sound of the word “pizza,” (and the salivating increases if you say the word
“cheap” in front of it); the phrase “Best Pizza” gets thrown around a lot because of it. If you
are from Chicago and don’t feel like hurting your friends’ feelings, there are three magic
words to reply with if someone calls the pizza the best: these words are, “I’m from Chicago.”
You will find more differences and just as many similarities with your town as you explore
Columbia, but this is just something to give an example of what to expect in Columbia. There
are a lot of great things that Columbia has to offer. Be sure to walk around and get to know
the place.
ryan shiner | staff writer
Leaving the Lone Star State
Moving from Houston, Texas, to Columbia was definitely a major culture shock for me. I had

3. lived outside of Nashville and Atlanta before living in Texas for the last two years of high
school, so I thought I knew what to expect when I came here. However, I couldn’t have been
more wrong.
The biggest difference — and the most immediately noticeable — was the diversity. MU
constantly touts its diversity as one of its selling points, but it was far less diverse than
anything to which I was accustomed.
In Houston and Atlanta, I was in a lot of classes that had students born in nearly every
continent of the world (except Australia and, of course, Antarctica). For this reason, when I
heard MU was a supposedly “diverse” school, I expected it to have similar demographics to
where I came from. Instead, I arrived on campus and saw a whole lot of homogeny.
In most of my classes in high school, there’d be at most maybe two or three other white
people, including the teacher. When I started class here, I’d walk into auditoriums filled with
white people. Although I never realized it, I had gotten used to being in the ethnic minority,
so it was kind of surreal being in a different demographic.
In addition to the ethnic diversity, the food in Columbia was different from what I was used
to eating. I was used to there being a ton of Mexican restaurants everywhere, so it was
surprising for me to come to a place where Taco Bell and Chipotle are considered good
Mexican food as opposed to just a last resort when nothing else is open. I’ve also learned that
it is not considered normal to put hot sauce on almost everything you eat.
Of course, the most important aspect of any culture is its sports. In that area, there was still a
mild transition for me. I was used to football being the most popular sport by far, with some
people being fans of basketball and an even smaller group of people following soccer teams.
Here, baseball is a thousand times more popular than it was anywhere else I lived, and
basketball is the next-most popular sport. While there are plenty of football fans, on average,
they are not as passionate about their teams as people are in the South.
All in all, it was certainly an interesting transition for me, but not a difficult one at all. As is
the case with moving anywhere, the biggest thing to remember is to be open to new
experiences and you’ll love it here.
hank koebler | reporter
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