2008 Woodie Awards
Orientation, Again
Lindsey Dragun
Issue date: 9/11/06 Section: Opinions
- Page 1 of 1
Orientation started with a flurry of activity...and ended with a bunch of burned out transfer students. It was nice to be included in some things, to have a week to get our bearings and adjust to a new school, but at the same time we'd already done everything. In years past, transfer students didn't even have the opportunity to participate in Orientation; the school assuming that we would adjust easier than those first year students who were coming from high school. That's right, but also very, very wrong.
Transfer students have a grasp of what college is, have less problems adjusting to "leaving the nest" or sharing bathrooms. These facts made half of the transfer process completely irrelevant. Where problems start is the assumption that freshmen will know less about the classes and culture of Rollins than the transfer students will. While tumbling from one activity to another (and all agreeing there were far too many we were "supposed" to be at), we desperately tried to rewire our brains: as the freshmen were starting fresh, we were forced to erase and pervert huge amounts of information we had brought into ourselves in an effort to survive at our previous colleges and universities.
For example, I was surprised to learn that when people at Rollins say "barbeque" they mean what I would call a cookout, and what my old school would have made into a much larger affair. And when people talked about living in frat houses, the freshmen (minds filled with pop culture) understood better than I, from a university where there were no Greek houses, did. Thankfully, we still had peer mentors, even if we didn't have an RCC class (I'm still not sure whether that is a good thing or a bad thing), were able to go to things like the Club Exhibition, and, for which we were all grateful, we were still allowed to add/drop classes the week before the other students returned.
Those things that the freshman complained about made us cringe and shy away even more: the early hours for some of the required activities, the length of time others took (when they could have taken up half that), but most especially the continued use of "2010" everywhere. It got to the point where reactions switched quickly from humorous, wondering if the Honor Code document we signed at Convocation was binding (since it stated we were in the class of 2010) and scratching out the last two digits on paperwork, to relieved (we didn't have to stand around waiting for a class picture).
Despite attempts to the contrary, transfers gained a very different view of the process and the school than the freshmen. We had less of a group mentality, since we didn't have a structured RCC, and less enthusiasm for the events that either took quite a bit of it to get through or an outlook on it that was still a high school one. We liked being at Orientation, but we weren't really a part of it.
Transfer students have a grasp of what college is, have less problems adjusting to "leaving the nest" or sharing bathrooms. These facts made half of the transfer process completely irrelevant. Where problems start is the assumption that freshmen will know less about the classes and culture of Rollins than the transfer students will. While tumbling from one activity to another (and all agreeing there were far too many we were "supposed" to be at), we desperately tried to rewire our brains: as the freshmen were starting fresh, we were forced to erase and pervert huge amounts of information we had brought into ourselves in an effort to survive at our previous colleges and universities.
For example, I was surprised to learn that when people at Rollins say "barbeque" they mean what I would call a cookout, and what my old school would have made into a much larger affair. And when people talked about living in frat houses, the freshmen (minds filled with pop culture) understood better than I, from a university where there were no Greek houses, did. Thankfully, we still had peer mentors, even if we didn't have an RCC class (I'm still not sure whether that is a good thing or a bad thing), were able to go to things like the Club Exhibition, and, for which we were all grateful, we were still allowed to add/drop classes the week before the other students returned.
Those things that the freshman complained about made us cringe and shy away even more: the early hours for some of the required activities, the length of time others took (when they could have taken up half that), but most especially the continued use of "2010" everywhere. It got to the point where reactions switched quickly from humorous, wondering if the Honor Code document we signed at Convocation was binding (since it stated we were in the class of 2010) and scratching out the last two digits on paperwork, to relieved (we didn't have to stand around waiting for a class picture).
Despite attempts to the contrary, transfers gained a very different view of the process and the school than the freshmen. We had less of a group mentality, since we didn't have a structured RCC, and less enthusiasm for the events that either took quite a bit of it to get through or an outlook on it that was still a high school one. We liked being at Orientation, but we weren't really a part of it.
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