But what does it matter? What difference does it make that instead of checking off that I’m White, Non-Hispanic, I check Hispanic? I’m still the same person. I still look the same, feel the same and act the same.

During this past summer, I traveled to Dartmouth College for the Dartmouth Bound Diversity Open House Weekend. Dartmouth flew 81 participants from around the country to the school so the participants could tour the campus and the town of Hanover, attend a couple of classes, learn about the application process from admissions officers, and experience college life by living in a residence hall and eating on campus.

During my visit to Dartmouth, I met some truly amazing people. In simply a matter of hours, I formed life-long friendships with people from Atlanta, Minneapolis and Texas. From the minute I walked onto campus, I was constantly meeting people.

On the last day of the program, the majority of my friends left on one of the earlier buses to go to the airport. I wasn’t scheduled to leave campus until later in the afternoon, so I grabbed a boxed lunch and looked around for someone I knew. I finally found a girl I had hung out with during the weekend but hadn’t really talked to. I knew her name and we recognized each other, so we decided to eat lunch together out on “the green” and relax until the bus showed up.

Over the next four hours, my new friend and I talked about everything that you could possibly imagine. We covered everything from college admissions to the war in Iraq, from religion to the BP oil spill, from politics to our extracurricular activities. I had heard the stories my parents and their friends told me of their late-night discussions in libraries and the commons area during their college years, but I had always thought of the stories as cheesy or un-true. But ‘lo and behold, here I was, doing exactly what my parents did years ago.

The Dartmouth Bound experience taught me several concepts. Not only did I learn about the application process and what it truly felt like to live by myself in a college setting, but I learned about interacting with other people. I talked to people who I probably never would have talked to if they went to school here, and it’s a shame that I admit to that.

It’s also a shame that here in Pinecrest and Palmetto Bay, we live in a bubble. We socialize with the same people for years (some of us since we were born). There are times when we momentarily break out of our shells to make new friends, but the fact remains that we live among similar people and simply don’t experience a unique aspect of life: diversity.

When I came back to Miami from Dartmouth and resumed walking Palmetto’s halls, I slowly realized that we do in fact socialize with the same people. Why? Palmetto is a gold mine of diversity; countless ethnicities, races, religious beliefs and lifestyles are represented through its thousands of students and hundreds of faculty members.What they say is true – Miami is a melting pot. We simply don’t take advantage of it. But here’s the good news:

You can change that.