Caroline Schaeffer
Contributing Writer
Orientation is packed with all kinds of activities designed to familiarize you with the campus, while also providing you with events and happenings to attend day and night. For some, the constant stream of events can become a little bit overwhelming, but luckily you can look forward to school as a change of pace. Having just been put into this situation less than two weeks ago, I think it’s safe to say that while I really did enjoy orientation, it felt very chaotic for me and I was ready to start classes and get into a regular routine.
Being off on my own for the first time in my life, I was eager to find my routine and stick with it, a goal that was hard to achieve with midnight ice cream parties one night and Wal-mart madness another. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy attending all these scheduled events; no one loves ice cream or shopping more than me. It’s just that being offered so many different activities in such a small time frame made me eager to find a daily schedule that I could rely on, and to find it as soon as orientation ended.
When Tuesday finally came around and orientation was over, I was a little bit relieved. I felt like I had just attended a summer camp for young adults and even though I was a little tired after the five-day orientation, I was really excited to start classes and really begin to feel like I attended school at the University. If there had been an extra day between orientation and classes, I don’t think I would have liked it. Although I’m never one to turn down a day off, leaving a day between orientation and classes free would have made it more difficult for me to fully adjust to how college life actually is. In the end, as much as I did enjoy orientation and each and every one of the activities and seminars I attended, I left orientation slightly exhausted and overwhelmed by everything. By the end, I was more than ready to slow my pace down and really begin to assert myself as part of the campus community, not just another lost first-year at orientation.