As we move into the final month of summer vacation, most of the incoming freshman are beginning to shop for their dorm room, talk to their roommate on Facebook, and start to experience that bit of anxiety and excitement of starting college. Even though I too am considered an incoming freshman, I've already been at college for six weeks. When I tell people that I'm already attending college, there are mixed reactions. Most of my friends responded with, "You're going to go to college in the summer? Really?" Honestly, I do have a little tinge of jealousy as I see all of my friends posting pictures of themselves on vacation, but the decision I made to start early was probably the best decision I've ever made.
I'm attending a large school, which mean everything is, well, big. The campus is huge, the number of students is well over forty thousand, and the average freshman class size is about three hundred students. I've known I wanted to go to this school ever since I was little, so all of these details didn't really matter to me until I actually started to go on tours. Every time I visited campus, it was so crowded and I never quite knew where I was. But, the summer program really helped.
To be completely honest, I didn't really want to do this program. I wanted to stay at home and hang out with my friends before we all go our separate ways. My mom tried to convince me for at least a month, telling me that it would help me so much. She finally was able to bribe me with a trip to South Carolina to visit my best friend over spring break. After these six weeks, I know I should always listen to my mom because she always seems to know what's best. With the summer program that I'm enrolled in, you are placed into a group of twenty four other students and you take two classes. The group stays together in both, so it's easier to get to know those people. I chose to take the freshman English class and a speech class to get two requirements out of the way. It was easier to know the professors, as well as the other students. I honestly feel like this will make the transition into fall so much easier. Campus is less crowded in the summer, so it was easier to learn the campus and all the locations of the buildings. I'm already accustomed to dorm life and I have met people that I will continue to talk to in the fall.
Even though I did get some of the initial move-in experiences and anxieties out of the way, I don't get to miss all of them. I am with a different roommate in the fall, so I've had to do the whole process over again. After my classes are finished, I'm going to head back home, then I will move in again with all of the other freshman at the end of August. Even though I may have missed out on a summer vacation, I feel like this has been more beneficial than anything else. I don't have to worry about wandering lost on my first day and people have already been asking me to walk with them around campus to try to find their classes. I already know how to do my laundry by myself and I know basically how everything works, even the library. Basically, these past six weeks are definitely going to be ones that I never forget.
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