The beginning of the semester is a really exciting time filled with new classes, new people to meet and new things to try. But there are still a few struggles that we all face while making the transition from life at home back to life at UConn.
The last time you paid any attention to the calendar was New Year’s, and now suddenly break is ending. Why couldn’t UConn give us just one more week?
You reluctantly say goodbye to your family, bed, bathroom, pets, home cooked meals, etc. (Also known as the easy life).
When you arrive back to campus, you find that your room must have shrunk over the past month because it is definitely much smaller than you remember.
But you decide to put your daunting living arrangements out of your mind and have fun reuniting with your friends.
Around dinner time you are forced to come to terms with the fact that food is not going to magically appear and that you need to get used to the dining hall or being responsible for your own meals again.
At 3 a.m. you are reminded both of how thin the walls in your building are and how your neighbors always seem to forget that they are not the only ones living there.
Going from sleeping in everyday to being woken up by an alarm at 7 a.m. leaves you feeling less than cheerful.
The next morning, you check the balance on your Husky Card to find that it is $0.21.
On the first day of class you remember that your transportation options at UConn consist of either walking miles in an icy tundra or trying to make sense of the bus system.
You are sitting in class when your professor drops the bomb that the textbook is going to cost over a hundred dollars.
And then the syllabus for your next class ends up being 90 pages long.
Coming up with an “interesting fact” about yourself to share with the class during ice breakers is one thing that somehow does not get easier the more times you do it.
Reality sets in much too quickly and suddenly you need to write three papers and figure out what you want to do with your life.
But a week later something happens that makes you realize that your parents actually did a pretty good job at preparing you for college.
Fast forward a couple of weeks and you have remembered that you love UConn and that this whole adulting thing isn’t quite so bad after all.
Here’s to a great semester, everyone!