Religion

I grew up being of the majority. Which where I grew up being Jewish was the predominate religion. Coming to SMU, I am now a minority. I feel myself holding back on announcing my religion. It’s really weird I’ve never felt that people would judge me because of my religion but for some reason here I do. Maybe its just paranoia but who knows. Sometimes, I feel like I’m the odd one out. Especially when everyone is putting up Christmas decorations and asking me what I wanted for Christmas! I’m Jewish people! I just want to scream that. I even tried to decorate my dorm with some sort of Jewish memorabilia but of course they had nothing remotely close to Jewish decorations at the SMU book store. It takes a little getting use too but I feel that I can grow from this new culture shock. Now I can relate to other people who are minorities. In my high school there was a very little black population. I always thought it was strange when all the black students at my school isolated themselves and sat by themselves at lunch. But now I realize you feel more connected to people that are of your same minority because people really don’t understand what it feels like to feel “left out” of the loop. It is just different for me. I do not know ho else to explain it. I thought everyone knew about all the Jewish holidays and believes of the religion but in actuality no one does and that was a complete shock to me! But I guess being Jewish differentiates myself from other people and I take that as a good thing. Who wants to be just like everyone else?