My First Day at College

When I first rolled into Trinity Western University in my parent’s minivan on O-Day oh-two, it was only my second time ever visiting the campus. The previous January, I had taken a quick tour in the middle of a snowstorm with a friendly Egyptian named Sam, but all I remembered from that were the hours for the Mail Centre (9 am to 5 pm, Monday – Friday, if you were wondering) . I knew I was showing up for something called “Orientation Week”, but the name didn’t offer many details on what my First Day at College was going to be like.

My first day at college! Well, “university”, I guess, but that sounds too elegant to get excited about. Hometown kids returning from the big city used to spout stories of their time away at college – but from those guys, there are really only two First Days at College stories: the one about beer, and the one about feeling horribly awkward. I’d never heard the one about being surrounded and engulfed by a raging sea of forcefully helpful people in Hawaiian shirts, so I guess that’s why I was a little surprised when Cathy Chapplow led her squadron of SOS leaders to my van, battered the doors down and started carting my belongings away, like an ant colony with guerilla tactics.

Stepping out of the van was like stepping into the Moulin Rouge, except instead of can-can girls and Ewan McGregor, there were a bunch of people in flowery t-shirts telling me how to get to “RNT”. I believe these people were trained to speak only in acronyms. All I really wanted to know was “Where’s my room?” and “Where can I store my boxes?”, but it was like trying to talk to C3PO. They’d all answer my questions with indecipherable strings of nonsense syllables, saying things like: “Go to RSC and ask your RA or SOS leader to get the RD to FUBAR the BQQ with the FHQWHGADS.”

For every new Confused New Person (“CNP”), there were at least three Helpful Happy People (or “HHP”’s, as I believe they prefer to be called), making it impossible to get to know anybody without accidentally being assisted with something. All us freshmen and freshladies got to wear these fancy laminated name-cards ( “FLNC”s) around our neck (“NECK”), which allowed us to introduce ourselves without even speaking out loud. This didn’t stop people from asking questions, though. By evening, I was hoarse from non-stop question-answering, but the only things I’d said all day were my name, major and hometown, repeated over and over again, like I was some strange mix between Jacob Two-Two and that guy from the Aviator.

It took a few weeks, but after a while, we all started to settle in. By “settle in”, I mean we started feeling confident and comfortable enough to complain about things freely. We all tried our hardest to make other people see and comprehend who we were and why we mattered, struttin’ around like chickens with our heads glued on, finding dorms and d-groups and teams and parties and girl/boyfriends and other means of proving we were all grown up. The funny thing is – and this is the part that you don’t find out till later – with motives like that, it all only proves the opposite.

Explanation: one day, second year, I visited the Career Centre (I think the actual acronym is CFLCACD) for some help with my resume. Of course, my rez. included a little info on what high school I went to. The lady helping me took one look at it, glanced up at me and said, “Honey? I hate to tell you this, but…high school doesn’t matter anymore.” And with that, she took her black Sharpie, slashed it across the page, and thus obliterated my entire secondary school experience.

So it’s like that. High-school’s done, and so are all the games you needed to play. It’s not that this place is forcing you to change or grow up, it just means you can start again. University’s a new life, and maybe you can take the chance to figure out the person you actually are, rather than just being what people told you to be. Make less time for proving yourself and more time for listening and learning and changing. Or as we like to say around here, “MLFPYAMTFLALAC.”