Concerning College, The First Few Days

Well, after a long absence from the blogging scene I have returned, and with the intention of actually updating. And possibly detailing some happenings in my real life. Now that I have one. It has been requested that I describe my first day of classes. But I found that before I could do that I had to explain something of the events that led up to the first day. To give the ambiance and feel of my college experience as well as possible. This may be a leangthy tome, but I shall break it up into reasonable chunks.

I arrived last week at Geneva College (a christian college in Beaver Falls PA). The Football team moved all my stuff into the room and then I waited for my room-mate to arrive so that I could arrange the furniture (yes, I needed his permission.) The first night all four guitars on our hall were brought out and engaged in a pretty decent rendition of “Hotel California”, it made a nice ambiance to the hall. At nine they served cookies and milk in the lounge and there was general socialization. During this general socilization an upperclassman walks up to a group of people and says “Hello, I’m Nate.”) thusly inducing a massive wave of introductions. When I gave my name Nate seemed excited. He explained that I was one of the few names that he remembered from the list of people in the focus group he was leading, and that there was another Marlin on campus. At that point I was dragged of and introduced to the other Marlin. That night I also learned that even if I introduced myself at first as Lyn, people always latched on Marlin. “Oh that is a cool name.” “Like the wizard, cool.” Or “ Marvin? Martin?” etc. Still, I have the feeling that I am going to be stuck somewhere between Marlin and Lyn.

The next day the craziness began. First we had an opening meeting, where they explained some of what was going on with Orientation week. After that we met our “focus groups” (which are basically our classes for the Learning and Transitions course, which is designed to help us get used to studying for college work), my group was composed entirely of English Majors, had three mentors (Nate being the most prominent and vociferous) and was overseen by the Research Librarian. We introduced ourselves and then proceeded to play a rather common name-game (that involved saying names and tossing an object around the circle). It worked fairly well, by the end of the class I knew the names of everyone in it, though I did not always associate the proper face with the name. After this we played a little game of “Never have I ever” since we hadn’t used all the time we were supposed to. During the game I was profiled as a D&D player. The person in the circle (one of the two Roberts in the class) said “Never have I ever played Dungeon’s & Dragons" and then turned to me. I was indeed forced to stand, and since I was the only one I assumed the center. During this experiment we also found out that not even the librarian had read the entire Canterbury Tales.

After this enlightening meeting we proceeded to lunch. Which was decent. I can’t remember what I had.

When we were done with lunch we had more meetings, first they explained various things about classes that I pretty much already knew or could have figured out on my own (how to use a Syllabus and how to keep ahead of assignments etc.). Then they discussed various policies, laying out the rules and explaining the judicial process.

Then they made us take a survey which included questions about how much money you were paying, how much financial aid you were receiving, your SAT scores and other various things that I couldn’t remember. If they wanted me to put down accurate answers (or even answer at all) they should have let me do it from the safety of my computer. Otherwise, I am sure they have places where they can find most of the information listed.

After that was dinner. And then we took buses to Pittsburgh, where we boarded the Gateway Clipper Fleet ship “Majestic” and proceeded to socialize. That was pretty cool. I took about a hundred and seventy pictures, vary few of which were of people. I socialized with a number of people, all of which I already knew, to one degree or another. With that many people it just seemed fruitless to introduce yourself to someone that you didn’t know. The sea of faces and names would only become more muddled than they already were.

We got home around midnight and proceeded to go to sleep. For the most part.

(Will be continued with the next days)