I have written my essays and bubbled in my multiple choice tests. Now, I’m home. And I’m no longer a first-semester freshman.
I am surprised how fast the semester has progressed. Only a few months ago I was sitting at convocation in Gampel Pavilion among nearly 3,000 of my Class of 2013 peers. I have only met a small fraction of those people though I’ve gotten to know many new friends in my dorm, learning community (1-credit course, half intro to college/half serious academic topic), classes and The Daily Campus. These social opportunities have made me feel more at home and eased my transition from high school to college.
Change, however, is not easy.
When I first started college, I still felt like a high school student. The large campus felt strange and foreign. Unlike high school, I had to adjust to longer walks to classes. Walking from the science wing to Clark House now looks like a warm-up! Most of my classes were held in different buildings, some a 20-minute walk from my dorm.
The experience of living in dorms provided a new social experience — I mean how cool to live in a building with your friends? Sure, there was some adjusting: doing laundry, adjusting to the little privacy afforded by the paper-thin walls, tolerating an early-morning fire drill, discovering which dining halls on campus have a greater food selection than others and learning the cheering traditions for the Husky student section at the basketball games. The classes were also different: more tests and little homework (except for some online homework for an ECON class that I had once a week).
One of my friends from GHS, who is now a fellow freshman, explained his transitioning process as the following:
“It is hard to believe that the 1st semester is almost over, it went by
very fast. Except for Cliff Sanden, who is in marching band with me, I
rarely see GHS people. The greatest change from high school is the type of
work–much more studying for tests than doing homework–this change was
also the most surprising.”-Joe Williamson
Stay tuned for more Husky Life: Semester II…
