I too was once a pre-frosh checking out the “Class Of 2009” discussion board. However, I was late jumping on that bandwagon so the interactions that I had with a few of the other ‘09-ers could only be categorized as short term. I chatted on the discussion board and briefly in a few instant messenger conversations with some of the students coming from my area. Our conversations were mostly about basic personal information and interests and how excited or nervous we were about starting school. When I met the people I had talked to, most were by coincidence and not a planned meeting. This was actually very positive and the CMC interactions served as an ice breaker and a sort of pre-formed bond that made the face to face encounter more exciting and positive than it may have otherwise been. Being that the CMC interactions that I had with these people were short term, I did not have as much time to build up expectations or get to know them on a deeper level that would possibly have over a longer period of time. I didn’t feel like there was a lot riding on the first meeting and the coincidence factor helped because there was not time to be nervous or think about what they might be like or form expectations.
My experience fit with the factors Ramirez and Wang discussed. The short term contact I had with these students via CMC preceding our face to face interaction lead to a positive evaluation. Most interactions proved to have violated expectations that, in accordance with Ramirez and Wang’s results, were positive violations. For example, one of these students, who is still a good friend, was very nice when we talked online and after our CMC encounter I expected her to be very nice but not much more in person. My expectations of her being a relatively “vanilla” person were violated, in a positive way, when I met her face to face and found that she was extremely funny and animated, a trait that did not translate in CMC. Meeting these students I was able to form reliable impressions based on a greater number of verbal and non verbal cues and make evaluations not tainted by idealized or over attributed expectations. Some of those face to face interactions were so positive that they lead to many subsequent meetings and happily, lasting friendships.
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2 comments:
Hi Colleen,
Nice post. I had a friend who did the same thing as you with the Class of 08 on Facebook but her story was a little different. My friend started talking to a guy and they actually started dating when they came to Cornell. But after a couple of dates she realized that he was not the right guy for her and they broke up. In this case, Ramirez and Wang’s theory about short term CMC interactions did not hold up and my friend’s expectation was actually violated. It is really interesting to see that due to sites like Facebook, how many of these relationships or friendships start even before people arrive at their respective colleges. This positive outcome for your friendships is also predicted by the URT by Berger and Calabrese. When you met them in Ftf, the more information you disclosed actually aided to form a bond between you and your friends. All in all, this was a nice post exemplifying Ramirez and Wangs theory about short term CMC interactions.
Colleen-
I really liked your post and how you related it back to the article by Wang and Ramirez. I found it to be very interesting how you had access to so many different people on the class of 2009 website and only spoke with a few about “surface” topics. I would probably have done the same thing as I have always been a bit leery about developing relationships with people in CMC if I know I may eventually meet them in person. It just sounds too awkward because of the many different perceptions they may make of me that may or may not be fulfilled upon meeting me. I definitely agree that your experience has to do with the short-term interaction and how it ended up giving you positive results. I personally like to meet people FtF before solidifying my impressions of them because of the presence of both verbal and nonverbal cues. It must have been so nice to meet someone that was better than you originally thought them to be!
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