When students come to Eastern, they’re coming for a reason. Whether to get a degree or to get some field experience in their profession.

However, some students attending EIU may not be aware of another reason they are coming here – to be responsible global citizens. And part of that is being educated and exposed to many different cultures.

Why would I want to be a global citizen or more diverse? Here’s why:

I want college to be that kind of cultural experience I had in highschool – only bigger and better. And EIU has plenty to offer students looking for diversity.

So, as a part of Eastern’s quest to educate its students to become global citizens, students can’t be diverse by sitting in their rooms all day listening to music or playing video games.

And frankly, sitting in my room all day playing video games gets pretty old pretty fast, and I’m not exactly doing myself a favor toward becoming more diverse. I botched my last two years doing exactly that, and I have one year left to become culturally diverse.

Sure, Eastern is a university stuck in the middle of farm country – but Charleston is a melting pot of different ethnicities and credos.

Keep in mind: we have more than 11,000 students attending in the 2007 school year. That’s not counting professors, local workers, residents and artists. That’s a lot of diversity to meet people from.

One way I plan on getting interested in meeting different people is finding out what kind of music people like listening to.

If I can’t initially find a way to reach out to different people, I want to get a diverse play list of songs and music from all sorts of people.

So music’s cool, right? What’s so fun about trying a different genre if I like listening to techno all the time, I used to think. Then I tried some classical, metal and soft rock. I had no idea some of the songs were so fun to listen to! Now I’m determined to see what else is fun to listen to out there.

The same goes for trying different foods, different restaurants and watching different movies. I’ve been at Eastern three years now and I still haven’t been out to eat everywhere!

I want to have a real blast at Eastern I can remember. I don’t want to remember what the inside of my dorm looked like.

I hope some of the younger students take this to heart if they already haven’t.

Meet new people. Try new things. We only get four years here, and Eastern is as good a melting pot as any university. Live not just a little – live a lot!