Dear New Bulldawgs,
Congratulations! All of your hard work, sweat, and most likely tears has gotten you to the moment you been waiting your entire high school career for. You opened your UGA portal to see the infamous fireworks telling you “Congratulations on your admission to the University of Georgia.” For the next couple of months, every day until August you are going to be counting down the days till you arrive at the best university in the world.
Pretty soon, you will be getting involved in GroupMe group chats were you’ll be getting to know your future classmates (and finding the ones that you need to stay away from). You will go through a similar form of online dating as you are trying to find your future roommate and endure awkward conversations with potential candidates. Some you will really hit it off with and others will never respond to your message. But then you meet “the one” and you decide to give them your last rose to make it official. The summer months will go by fast, as you will attend orientation where you learn to fall more in love with UGA and Athens, filling out last-minute scholarships, starting to shop for your dorm room, going to Dawg Camp and meeting your first of many ohanas on campus.
Me and my Dawg Camp Family- SHOUT OUT to my Silver 2s
Move in day will be here before you know it, and you are getting ready to set off and start your new life. Your mom, of course, will be sad and start crying, and your dad will not show how he’s really feeling on the inside. But they are nothing but proud of you for all that you have accomplished to get to this moment. Your first year of college is full of fresh starts and plenty of firsts for you. So enjoy every moment of it. Enjoy getting to know your roommate and hall mates and create memories with them. Enjoy eating at Snelling at 1 a.m. on a Thursday night knowing you have an 8 a.m. next day. Enjoy going to MLC for late-night study sessions and drinking way too much Jittery Joe’s and Starbucks to help keep you up, joining cool clubs and organizations, and going to on-campus events with friends such as Dawgs After Dark. Enjoy the months of September through November where you get a chance to spend your Saturdays with 93,000 of your closest friends cheering on the dawgs in Sanford Stadium.
However, there are going to be some not-so-pleasant moments, too, that you’ll experience. You’ll learn that it’s time to break out of old high school habits because it’s not going to work in college. You will endure satan-like prerequisites such as chemistry, pre-calculus and accounting that will have you ringing the chapel bell at the end of the semester because you made it out of the class in one piece. And, sometimes you will feel like there is nothing else you can do but cry. But at the end, when you look back at these situations, you’ll be amazed that you had made it through it all.
Overall, don’t be scared of what is going to happen in August. Don’t be scared to talk to your hall mates because you will never know what friendships will form out of it. Don’t be scared to change your major or even add another major altogether. Don’t be scared to give your first speech in public speaking class. Don’t be scared to apply for that leadership position because you may never know what can happen, even as a freshman. Don’t be scared to reach out for help from friends, upperclassmen, professors, or pretty much anybody because everybody is on your side and they want to see you achieve and reach your goals that you have set for yourself. Don’t be scared because college allows you to experience new things and, most importantly, learn more about yourself and who you are as a person.
So get hyped, wear your red and black everywhere you go, learn how to love and proudly sing “Glory, Glory” at the top of your lungs, and most importantly GOOOOOOOOOOO DAWGS!
Welcome to the bulldawg family Class of 2021!