The First Cornell Student I Ever Met

One of my biggest concerns about going to Cornell, besides the intimidating workload, was who I would be living with. But some of my apprehension was temporarily calmed when I interacted with one of my future suitemates online through the Class of 2008 website. For those of you who don’t know, the Class of 2008 site was set up like a less sophisticated and simpler facebook (no applications, no cool graphics) where entering Cornell freshman could log on, set up a profile, and meet fellow members of their class even before everyone arrived in Ithaca.
I actually ended up receiving a message from a girl (let’s call her Louise) who would be living right next door to me. I was definitely enthusiastic to learn more about her, and to my surprise we had a bunch of stuff in common. We were both from practically the same neighborhood and were interested in majoring in some type of science. Louise and I im’ed each other here and there and thought it would be cool to hang out at home before Cornell.
We did meet up, and to put it bluntly, I realized we were much more different than I had thought. It was a while ago (almost 4 years!) so I can’t remember exactly what we talked about, but I remember thinking that I hoped everyone else at Cornell was not like Louise!
This situation best fits with SIDE theory because when Louise and I interacted online, group identity was salient. SIDE theory predicts that online, individuating characteristics are kept almost hidden, so that the group is salient. Louise and I fit could identify with the same group. We were both in the same class, has similar academic interests, grew up in the same city, and were living in the same building for our first semesters at Cornell.
However, individual identities became much more salient in person, and despite the positive interactions in CMC, our FtF interaction was quite negative. According to SIDE predicitons, this differentiation that occurred between Louise and I in person decreased attraction because we realized our differences and group membership was no longer salient. This can partly be explained by the limited knowledge I had about Louise in the first place; since didn’t know a whole lot about her, the things that I did know made me feel like we were a part of the same group. When I did meet her in person and realized that both our interests (and even personalities) conflicted, I formed negative impressions of her. These negative impressions could have even been worsened by our initial CMC interactions because I was entering the situation with many expectations.
As it turned out, Louise didn’t get along with many people that we lived with in the beginning of our freshman year. She moved out of the dorm within a month. Hopefully, she has found a group that she can more closely identify with!