Nathaniel Dunaway meets with Western students to discuss their lives and their experiences in the world of higher education. In doing so, he hopes to find an answer to the question what does it mean to be a college student in the 21st century?

I’m from Southern California and I wanted to move to Oregon. It was between Oregon and Arizona, and Arizona was too hot. But I was ready to move out of my parents’ house, and I came up here to look at OSU.

At the airport, my mom said she’d heard about this school called Western Oregon University. So she said “Let’s just drive by and see if you like it.” So we drove by and I took a tour, and I liked it 10 times better than OSU. I liked the small classrooms.

I like teachers to know who I am. I liked the feel of the campus a lot more. I applied that night at the airport while our flight was delayed.

People are a lot nicer here than they are in Southern California. I use my grocery store example: if you’re at the grocery store in Oregon, you can have a full-on conversation with someone you don’t even know over what type of milk you’re buying.

In California, if I were to even start saying something like “oh, those milk prices” or whatever, someone would just stare at me like “why are you talking to me?” It’s fast-paced where I come from. People don’t really take the time to engage with other people. Everyone’s kind of in their
own bubble.

I remember the first time I drove up into Oregon and I got out of the car to pump my own gas, and the guy freaked out on me. But now I go back home and I’ll just sit in the car like “hello, it’s been like 10 minutes.”

I started classes fall 2013. I took the general, entry-level psychology classes, and those were the only textbooks where I could actually sit and read them front to back, and stay engaged.

When I sat down to decide my major, I just weighed the pros and cons of what I enjoyed reading and
doing. So I picked psychology. Now I know almost my entire department by name, and I like that. When I graduate, I’m gonna be sad to leave, but I think I’ll be ready to move on.

The thing about going to college is that it’s become the new high school diploma. A bachelor’s degree wasn’t what it was 20 years ago. You’re not going to go out and find a high-paying job right away. It’s just not gonna happen. So you have to further your education. I have to. There’s
nothing I can do with a psychology bachelor’s. So I’ll get my master’s in psychology, then my Ph.D., and I’m going back to California for that.

I’m such a psychology nerd. Psychology, for me, was just relatable. I think that’s really important. Everything I’m learning is relatable. With each class, I’m liking it more and
more. And it’s great that I can use what I know to help my friends and family, and hopefully later on I’ll be able to help people I don’t know. I’m not losing my steam for psychology. I love it.