Howard Experience

What is the Howard Experience?

It was my senior year of high school and I could not be more ecstatic. I only had one more year left until I was out of there for good but since there were many different projects and deadlines that were approaching, my life was turning into a giant ball of stress. Even though I had all of that going on, the most stressful thing of all was trying to pick the college that was right for me.

After I had done months of research to decide where I wanted to go, I concluded that I wanted to become a Howard Bison. Once figuring out that I wanted to attend Howard, I started reading reviews of what students thought of the University and continued to notice people mentioning the “Howard Experience.” Questioning that phrase, I began to establish my own meaning of it which resulted in being: although there are many assumptions as to what the Howard Experience is, the real explanation is being able to be surrounded by a diversified group of educated black people who have similar life goals and interest as oneself.

Some may argue that one can achieve greatness wherever he or she goes and that being surrounded by a group of young educated black people that attend Howard would be more intimidating than it would be helpful. For example, there are a lot of black people that come to Howard from a majority white school and they most likely were the smartest black people in their class. Coming to Howard from that could discourage the students because they realize that they are no longer the smartest. Although that is an acceptable assumption, that is not the case.

This is because it is obvious that while attending an HBCU there is going to be more people that are similar to the African race, but it would result in being a great quality of the university. If the Howard student had an attitude of striving to be the best, then having more educated black people surrounding him or her would be better because the situation then would turn into a challenge....