How do you identify yourself at Iowa?

“Can I ask you a question for an article that I’m writing?”

Every face looked hesitantly at my smile, with an annoyance that I know I wear every time somebody tries to interrupt my busy day. “I promise it’s not who you intend to vote for,” I elaborated with an awkward giggle, and was surprised by the amount of people who stopped outside of the Hawk Shop to talk to me. Perhaps they were simply as unwilling as I was to step back out in to the sub-arctic Midwestern air, or maybe I still underestimate the willingness of this student body to interact and collaborate with one another.

“How do you identify yourself as a student at Iowa?” I asked my bundled peers, and as they struggled to categorize themselves I wondered if I could answer my own question by saying that every student at the University of Iowa can be identified as one thing: cold.

Rachel Walter doesn’t only identify by her sorority letters but as a business student

It wasn’t until I began writing this article that I truly asked myself this question. I’m an English and Journalism double major. I’m in a sorority. I’m participating in Dance Marathon. I’m an out of state student from Colorado (which people think credits my tolerance for cold weather- but the Midwest is not cold, it is frigid.) I’m an honors student. I’m a programming director for Hillcrest Association. I’m constantly busy and a little overwhelmed, but wildly excited by everything I’m already involved with after one semester at this school. In many ways I’m just finding out how to define myself as a person, let alone as a student at Iowa.

I saw my same conflict pass across every face as I asked them this question. Everyone needed elaboration. “Well, maybe it’s a certain club, a Greek organization, your major, or anything else…if you had a business card as a student with your name and one title below it, what would that title be?”

Melanie Taylor is a Journalism Mass Communications major, a member of Greek life, a participant in Dance Marathon, works for the Daily Iowan, is involved with Her Campus Iowa, and she identifies as an honors student.

Maybe it’s the fact ice breakers have forced us into the habit of introducing ourselves alongside our major, or that everyone was buying their new textbooks, but 12 of the 16 people that I managed to talk to on the first day of class identified themselves by their major.

Of the other four, two identified as honors students, one by her sorority, and one simply as a senior. Our major is, after all, the identity that we had before actually stepping on to campus and joining sororities, frats, and clubs. Our majors determine our classes, and in turn the people that we meet within them. It’s one of the few things that will indefinitely follow us after graduation. For me, it’s what brought me to this school in the first place, and just a couple paragraphs ago it was the first thing that I listed without thinking.

Even the boy who I targeted for his hat with Greek letters or the girl with ten different pins on her backpack announcing her activism saw themselves first and foremost as students. At a huge and dynamic university where students are raising money through Dance Marathon, they are student activists, they have jobs, and they always save time for fun and friends: most still identify themselves by the one thing that most directly makes them a Hawkeye.

Many of the students who I talked to are freshmen, like myself, and it’s easy and maybe even naïve to identify ourselves by something that could change as easily over the next three and half years as we could.  But if I’ve learned one lesson so far in college (one that I didn’t immediately forget over winter break) it’s that there’s nothing wrong with throwing yourself in to something, even if it doesn’t work out.

Aside from identifying as a yogurt lover, Drake Shepard (far right) is a student in the Tippie College of Business. Also pictured: Augie Russo, Jeff Duke, and Scott Sokniewicz.

I’m proud of myself and my student body for committing ourselves so fully to an education that we blindly hope will guide us in to the future after graduation. I’m proud to be and English and Journalism major, and as always I am proud to be a Hawkeye.