While reading Orange is the New Black, I thought a lot about the ways in which Piper’s prison sentence challenged her to adapt to an entirely new way of living. This made me also think about the ways in which I myself have at times entered a new environment and had to learn the nuances of how to thrive in those circumstances. The immediate example I think of is college. As a first-generation student (meaning: neither of my parents went to college), I moved into my dorm room and started classes feeling overwhelmed and thinking that I would never “fit in” with my new surroundings. I was confused by the language that professors were using, I felt inundated with administrative tasks, and I became frustrated by the amount of unspoken college customs that my peers seemed to pick up on naturally (apparently, it was massively “uncool” to use a tray in our dining hall). Ten days in and I was convinced that I had made the wrong decision in going to school and decided I should probably go home.
By the end of the first month, however, things got progressively easier. I started making friends and becoming more familiar with the way things worked on campus. I challenged myself to meet with professors during office hours and attend student events. I got to know the people who worked in the dining hall and library. I even got a fun job on campus, working in the video editing lab. The rest of the semester went by quickly and I found myself legitimately sad to go home for winter break. Since then, I have been lucky enough to make a career out of helping students find their way in college.
Going to prison is obviously very different than going to college, but the process of entering a new environment and learning how adapt is often similar regardless of the specific circumstance. We, like Piper, are forced to re-think our perspectives, rely on the help of others, and grow in our resilience. We learn a lot about ourselves while doing so. I find Piper’s story particularly inspirational because of how many human connections she made and how her experience in prison helped her understand the depth of the lives of a population of people that is often stereotyped and misunderstood. In this way, Piper shows readers that she not only learned how to survive the physical structure of prison, but also grew in her understanding of the incarcerated population while learning a lot about herself as well.
As we look at every new experience as an opportunity to learn and grow, we soon realize that our capacity for both is huge. Sometimes it is bigger than we ever thought.