College Tip 1: Orientation Day is What You Make of It

Picture Source: Springfield College
https://springfield.edu/orientation/new-student-orientation

*The following is a poem taken from my poetry collection.

Orientation Day

No pause: time for orientation day.

After saying familial farewells,
I rushed back inside of Hopkins Hall
and went to my new room,
where I completely lost it.
Tears flowed and flowed,
drenching my neon green T-shirt.
Then came
the sound of someone opening the door.

NO!

I felt like
I had to act cool
to survive this.

One time, I played Eugene
in my high school’s production of Grease,
with basically the same
amount of lines as the T-Birds,
so you could say
I had the acting thing down.

After introducing ourselves,
we went downstairs together.
Swinging doors open,
we found our place among
other scared freshmen,
cramped in the courtyard.
My roommate wandered off
to talk to his friends,
leaving me all alone.

I looked for anyone else
alone, too,
but it seemed like everybody
had someone to talk to.

I didn’t wanna be perceived
as that creepy guy
who tried to talk to the girls,
nor was I mentally prepared
to approach a large group of guys.

To this day,
I can only handle talking to three or four
guys together at a time.
Any more than that is a
masculinity overload.

I never really liked to
be the one
everybody looked at,
and this orientation seemed to feel
just like that.

Well-liked in high school,
I’d often talk with someone
at football games
and school plays,
and they’d always leave
seeking somebody else,
and I would feel so
desperate.
Desperation manifested itself
with a deafening voice.

“Everybody, all around,
is judging you. You
don’t belong here.”

Gasping, I brought myself
back to the present,
and I began to wonder,

How could all of these
people already be friends?

I felt like I had
nothing new to contribute
to these groups.

With everyone ready,
we walked to the Ikenberry Commons,
the pinnacle of student living.
The metal doors were open,
an invitation into the giant space.

Up a black staircase, we went
to crowd inside a conference room.
Everybody circled up
for the introductory game: “move your butts,”
where one person
stands in the middle
and tells everybody to
move their butts
if the statement applies.

Although it was cheesy,
I was hopeful to have
something in common
with my new neighbors.

Hope faded fast
soon after I realized that
the amount of people in the room
surpassed my entire high school class.

“Everybody, all around,
is judging you. You
don’t belong here.“

The first girl to go said,
“Move your butt
if you have a dog!”
I wanted to lie to avoid
getting stuck in the middle,
but that would be downright
disrespectful to my three
furry babies.
So, I just rotated
one space to the right.

Luckily, I didn’t have to go
in the middle at all.

The next day was filled with
rounds of Jeopardy! and “name that song.”
Although I was the MVP
of “name that song,”
no one talked to me afterwards,
so I sat by myself
in my mind
for the rest.

Fortunately, I mustered
up the confidence
to make a few friends later on,
but these didn’t extend
much beyond “hi”
in the dining hall.
Seeing friends
from high school
grabbing ice cream
with their orientation leaders
on social media
made me feel
like something was wrong with me.

The voice of desperation from day one
echoed from the second I woke up
to the second I fell asleep,
over and over again
for the next two weeks.

“Everybody, all around,
is judging you. You
don’t belong here.“

It didn’t help
that my roommate was friends
with one of the orientation leaders,
and all of their friends came
to our room to hang out one day.

They hardly even acknowledged me.

Although it’s a sad memory,
I’m grateful
for orientation day.
It introduced me
to the piercing voice of
desperation
that I would eventually learn
to tune out.
It proved
if I could get through
impenetrable loneliness,
I could do just about
anything.

*Note: The bottom line is that orientation day is what you make of it, and it doesn’t define how the rest of your college experience will go. The day can be incredibly awkward, especially since orientation day is largely being held online because of the pandemic. But it can also be really exciting. If you make friends immediately, that’s great. But if it’s not until after orientation day that you create those relationships, you should know that that’s OK, too.

In this article series, I share excerpts and stories from my book, Are These the Greatest Years?. I hope you enjoyed this post — if you enjoyed it and want to connect you can reach me here via email dominicrose50@gmail.com or connect with me on social:
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Also, you can find my book on Amazon — here is the link to buy it: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08DTJMMTQ/