Ah, freshman orientation. I wasn’t experiencing it too long ago myself, actually one month exactly from today. One full month of being in college! Anyways, the day was August 19, 2017. I had tossed and turned all night, only to be awoken at 5:30 AM to my mother frantically running around the house making sure I hadn’t forgotten anything for my first month of college. It was hilarious that she would think that we had forgotten something, it wasn’t like we had spent the WHOLE summer packing and separating which clothes I could take versus leave at home with my younger sister. But after a couple “calm down mother”s and “please mom PLEASE”s, my dad, mom, sister and I were ready to go. Like the weirdo that I am, I waved goodbye to my bedroom like it understood the significance of the day and piled into the car. The drive to Gambier was brutal. I had wanted to just hang out in the backseat, blare emotional music as I left Chicago behind, and maybe even take a nap. But my family wasn’t going to let that happen. Every couple minutes my mom would glance at me from the front seat as if to confirm what she already knew: I was a nervous wreck.
But sure enough, after six and a half painful hours, we finally arrived at Kenyon. Within 15 minutes of arriving on campus, I was already surrounded by overbearing parents, nervous incoming freshman, and orientation leaders who were asked absurd questions every two seconds, which they answered with incomprehensible ease. As I unloaded my gear from the back of the car, firemen flocked us, grabbed my boxes and rushed them up to the third floor of McBride.The next obstacle I was to face was meeting my roommate who I had been texting the last month but really had no idea what was like. Of course, she was amazing and was to become a close friend for me here, but I didn’t know that yet. Our parents awkwardly exchanged stories of the drive here, and soon enough my roomie and I were on our way to our first of MANY unnecessary and extremely long meetings about how to organize your homework, navigate social situations and the kicker: how to eat healthy in college. They would also schedule these meetings at the most obscure and unhelpful times; we would go to meetings at 7:45 and I would glance around at kids sleeping in the back rows, or we would have meetings at 4:00 when all the athletes would try to get out of the auditoriums without making too much racket. But now looking back on it, I am happy that they made us go to those meetings. We were forced to sit next to people we didn’t know, have awkward conversations, and add each other on Snapchat. Sure enough, I’m friends with a bunch of people on Snapchat that I haven’t talked to since those first few days. And whoever said that you make friends at freshman orientation that you never talk to again was right in some relationships; there are definitely some people that I awkwardly wave to that were in my orientation group, but I also met a lot of great people who I hang out with all the time. So even though in some ways freshman orientation was awkward and forced, it allowed me to meet a lot of cool people and definitely get out of my comfort zone.
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