Identifying Dina's Issues in Packer's Drinking Coffee Elsewhere Essay

Identifying Dina's Issues in Packer's Drinking Coffee Elsewhere - Essay Example She copes through displacing her mental location from her physical location, being someone else who exists outside of her own circumstance. Packer explores the experience of being eighteen and trying to understand ones own role in the world while navigating a foreign culture that emerges when leaving home and entering a university. The world of an individual changes when they leave home and enter a university setting. Most young people have lived with their family in a specific type of neighborhood for most of their lives. Even people who have moved frequently trend to gravitate towards neighborhoods that are familiar. Therefore, children have a specific perspective before they leave their family for college which is challenged by the new culture that confronts them within a university setting. For Packer, this university setting was Yale where from the beginning she felt challenged for the protective measures of distrust she had developed in her life. Her orientation involved games of trust which did not suit her perspective on others in the world which was automatically mistaken for a part of her racial identity.