My first impression on my subculture was very different from what I expected it to be. Because I am an insider to my subculture, I got my first taste of it when the cheerleading season first began. My initial thought of my subculture was that it was going to be a lot easier than the team that I was on in high school, which is correct, but I thought that it was also going to be very demanding and difficult. While there are difficult and demanding aspects to Ball State Cheerleading, it is not nearly what I expected. Because before I came to Ball State, my high school team and all-star team focused on competitions rather than games, which is obviously going to require the team to be more advanced and to have skills perfected and mastered. At Ball State, the focus is on games because that is what cheerleaders original purpose was meant to be. At first, this made me downgrade the team that I was a new member of, but I quickly learned that just because the BSU team does not have the skills that I am accustomed to, that does not make them work any less hard. It is just a different focus.
I feel as though I really belong in this new space. I originally felt intimidated by the older members of the group, which caused me to hold back on some of my skills. However, as time went on, I began to feel more and more like an insider. I realized that new people and environments take time to get used to.
I know that I am an insider of this group just as much as any other member to the squad. This is because I did the same try-out as everyone else and had to preform the same skills. However, I do not have as much as a say in things and know less about the subculture than the older girls that have been members of the team for a longer amount of time. This can cause me to be somewhat of an outsider because my knowledge of the subculture is not as extensive.
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