August 2004
I’ve yet to discover any college or university that doesn’t run some sort of first year orientation for their students, whether its for a Saturday afternoon in the summer or right before the start of classes in the fall. My first year orientation at HC lasted a full week, which was several days more than anyone else’s at the time. I discovered the motivation behind our long orientation week right away; it seemed that I had stumbled into HC at the start of a completely new academic program. In other words, my freshman class the guinea pig class, but we didn’t really know that yet. What we did know is that we were HC’s largest class, weighing in at around 300 students give or take, and we were the first to experience The August Experience.
We were forcibly acquainted with our Resident Assistants (R.A.s) on the first day as we moved into our non-air-conditioned dorm rooms in the 90-degree southern Indiana heat, and shortly thereafter, we met with our Peer Advisors (P.A.s). These were first of many acronyms that would begin to dot my college career. Anyway, as it turns out, we were broken into groups of about 12 or 15 students per P.A. and it was the P.A.’s job to lead us through this brand new orientation week. It wasn’t a job I envied them; after all, most of the orientation events weren’t specifically mandatory, though there weren’t exactly voluntary either. That includes the intense midnight pep session in the gymnasium that was supposedly one giant ice breaker/get-to-know-you/team building exercise. Like I said, it was intense…
The majority of our orientation week consisted of a series of “classes” that we were to have with our P.A. groups, each group with it’s own member of HC’s faculty. In these classes, we were to all discuss and write one paper on our assigned summer reading, Into the Wild, and yes, HC assigned us summer reading before we’d even registered for a class. I have to confess, I didn’t read Into the Wild until I arrived at HC which supposedly put me a little behind my new classmates, but quite honestly, I didn’t notice much of difference, which leads me to believe that I wasn’t alone in starting my college procrastination tradition as early as possible. However, the intent of these mock class sessions was clear: welcome to HC, now get to work. We were supposed to learn what would be expected of us from our college professors, and to a certain degree, it worked. But, as my essay was hardly marked and certainly not graded by my faculty group leader, I think I must have missed the point.
There however other important parts of orientation week that I did experience. Naturally, we peppered our P.A., Amy, with dozens of questions as it related to HC life. She was a senior, affiliated to the sorority Chi Omega, and I believe a Theology major or something like it. Also, there were elections to chose the first year delegates to the Student Senate, philanthropy activities, placement exams, field games, hikes around HC’s extensive trails, and even a late night bonding and team building exercise in the Horner Center. It was an impressive, if slightly dull and not too thrilling, itinerary meant to get us through our first week at HC.
Still, as the week wound down, we had yet to complete the final step that would cement us in as HC students: registration. After our various placement exam scores were calculated (I took two, one in French and one in Spanish, to the never-ending amazement of my dorm neighbor), we scheduled meetings with our Faculty Advisors who were to guide us through the registration process (mercifully, Faculty Advisors don’t have acronyms). My advisor, who would remain my advisor for the duration of my HC career, was the slightly eccentric but astonishingly brilliant French professor, Dr. Dalka. She too was slightly amazed by my two placement exam scores, which allowed me to begin French and Spanish both at the advanced level. Unfortunately, she showed just as little understanding for the complicated registration options as I did.
In simple terms, under the new academic plan, students were required to complete certain courses known as Liberal Arts Degree Requirements (LADRs) along with certain courses in the student’s chosen major. The LADR requirements fall under different areas of study including Examined Life (theology and philosophy), Modern Societies (psychology, sociology, anthropology, history), Abstract and Formal Reasoning (mathematics and English), Natural World (biology, psychology, chemistry), World Languages (German, Spanish, French), Other Cultures (all-encompassing as it pertains to non-western culture), and Great Works (multi-disciplinary first year courses). Naturally, of these LADRs have their own acronyms.
Now, it’s a seeming simple task, choosing your classes, but as a freshman, I obviously had no idea what I was looking for, and with a new system, Dr. Dalka honestly didn’t either. I was required to register for a Great Works course, and I didn’t make into my first choice, my second choice, my third choice, or my fourth choice. Instead, I wound up in an 8 a.m. course with a studio art portion (we’ll come back to that later). With my placement exam scores at hand, Dr. Dalka immediately put me into her Introduction to French Literature course and a Spanish conversation course as well after she realized that I had taken the Spanish exam, too. That left one open spot, which we eventually managed to fill with a “linked” Examined Life sequence in philosophy and theology.
I should mention a little more dull detail about the Registrar’s Office, as many of you college students out there will sympathize with the semi-yearly fight to schedule courses. There are a few factors that the college student will be looking for in the perfect course schedule: no classes before 10 a.m., a convenient lunch break sometime between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., and of course, the not so tiny problem of finding classes that are both interesting and not too tough in terms of the syllabus. Also, you’re looking at the professor and the commentary on the course by the upper classmen. Consequently, much of the end of my orientation experience was spent hustling back and forth across the sunny quad from Dr. Dalka’s office in Old Science Hall to the Administration Building attempting to be signed into all the appropriate classes.
At the end of the week, I, along with the other freshmen, watched as the campus slowly but surely filled with all the upper classmen returning for another year of classes, which included my roommate. She was a transfer student that somehow escaped the orientation experience and yet wound up with me, a freshman, as her roommate. And so on the traditional Labor Day Monday, I finally began that vastly daunting and incredible foray into college.
