Welcome Weekend 2024: Advice on Embracing College Life
An empty bed. An empty desk. An empty chair. Welcome to college! Image credit: Toni Spellacy
Take a deep breath, folks. It's a new year: fall of 2024. The world is near collapse, but thank God it's time to move into Swig with your random roommate for your first year, and possibly experience lead poisoning. More on that later. As an upperclassman with the pleasure of working during this (God-forsaken) Welcome Weekend, here are my ponderings and precautions for all you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed first-years.
If you are wondering if people can tell you are a freshman while actively moving into McWalsh in a two-piece Lululemon set, I promise the answer is yes. Double points if you are wheeling a hamper you checked out of the mail room. Triple points if, on your way there, your parents make you stop to take a picture in front of the Bronco statue. It's OK, we've all been there. However, I did hear someone's parents mention a yacht club party after Move-In. We have not all, in fact, been there.
With all this being said, I am here to impart some wisdom to the freshman as I embark on my junior year. To begin, I'm sure sometime in your first weekend you decided to follow your friends to a frat and ended up in the Kisco basement, covered in somebody else's sweat and possibly, regrettably, sober. Don't trust everything you see on Fizz. If that was you, let me be the first to say: I am so sorry. Hopefully, like me, you also found a thankfully cooler outdoor frat party and decided a carbonated beverage with music blasting might not be so bad.
Next: let's assume you have also found a way to navigate Benson by now. Hopefully not after said frat party. Please, please, please wait for your order to say ready before you come charging up and manhandling the itty bitty receipts they put in the bowls. If the pasta has red sauce and you ordered pesto, it’s probably not yours. You're clogging up the pasta station. And for the love of God, throw away your bowl. Seriously, who raised you?.
OK, let's be serious now. Let me offer a few more sincere suggestions, if I may. If you are able, call your parents. Your mom misses you and doesn't want to bother you, and your dad misses you and doesn't want to admit it. Go to class as much as possible; it really is worth it. Try new things. If you don't like that first club meeting you never have to go back. Be friendly. Say hi when you pass someone in the hall, even if you aren't sure you are at "that level" of friendship. Take care of yourself, and drink some water. Just not from the Swig sinks. Like I said, lead poisoning.