Halfway through the fall semester of my fourth year, I can’t help but reminisce on some of the highlights of the first-year experience. Here are 10 things that I am forced to lament with each passing day — but fortunately, the mourning period is quite fleeting.
1. Using Google Maps to find my way to French class
On the first day of my first year, my first class was all the way in Nau Hall. I had no idea where this mysterious Nau Hall was, so it was me and Google Maps against the world. I gave myself no less than an hour to complete the 20-minute walk from New Dorms, and when I made it to my French class with over 30 minutes to spare, I truly felt like I had accomplished something. Being GPS-dependent to walk to class was no easy feat, but I survived — and only learned months later that I was taking the most inconvenient routes to just about anywhere around Grounds.
2. Getting locked out of my dorm room
I can still visualize the horrid sight of my closed dorm room door while I stood in the hallway with no key and no phone at 3 a.m. Keyless and phoneless, my options were slim. I had to wait 30 minutes in the hallway for someone to appear so I could ask to use their phone to call maintenance. Staring at the wall in the hallway without my phone really forced me to contemplate the meaning of life — and why I will never leave my room without my phone again.
3. Saying that I am still “undecided” about my major
Telling people that I still had not decided on a major was fun and freeing. I changed my mind daily, and it was exhilarating to imagine the possibilities and take on a different persona with each different major I considered. I wrote a single discussion post for my philosophy class, and then I had a breakthrough — am I Albert Camus? I was a philosophy major for that day, and when that dream came crashing down when my first paper on numerical identity didn’t knock my TA’s socks off, I thought — maybe I should try my hand in psychology?
4. Dorm fire alarms — and if you’re lucky, a real dorm fire
I truly do miss waking up in the middle of the night to a fire alarm blaring inside my dorm. I was always thrilled by the quick thinking required — first figuring out what the noise was, next how I would find the strength to pry myself out of bed and finally going down the staircase from the sixth floor. You’d see people that you didn't even know lived in your building, and there was a fun array of outfits on display. Sometimes, a fire truck would even show up. The best part? Fire alarms would always go off at the most convenient times, like the night before my final exam.
5. The post-shower walk through the hall to my dorm
As a proud Balz-Dobie resident, I got to share a communal bathroom with an entire hall and parade myself back to my room in only my robe — how did I get so lucky? I miss the freezing rush of cold air hitting me in the hall after a hot shower. I also miss bumping into people on the trek back to the room. No need to make lunch plans with people who live on your hall — you can simply catch up while you’re dripping wet, wearing shower shoes and have only a towel on your person.
6. Having so much time left to “experience” everything
I still don’t know what it means to have a “true college experience”, but that expression is used so much that I used to assume that I would figure out what it meant by my fourth year. The four years ahead of me served as the perfect rationalization and explanation for just about any issue I was facing. Want to stay in and watch a movie on a Friday night? Thankfully, I have an endless number of weekends ahead of me to go out. Now, I am a fourth-year student who still hasn’t found the definition of the “true college experience” and might be running out of Friday nights to reach a conclusion.
7. Engaging in constant self-introductions
Name, pronouns, hometown, intended major — I eventually had the spiel locked down. I could rattle off these introductions in my sleep, and I knew how to react like everyone’s answer was the most interesting thing I heard that day — even though they told me they were majoring in biology on the pre-med track. Exciting! The constant self-promotion was exhausting, but I would do it all day if it meant avoiding having to share a fun fact about myself.
8. Thinking that fourth-years were so wise
I remember thinking fourth-years were so much older and more put together than me. I would marvel at fourth-years in my classes, wondering if I too would ever be so wise and so knowledgeable. It’s almost deflating to realize that fourth-years were actually never these mythical creatures that I made them out to be in mind — if I’m a fourth-year now, there is certainly a hole in that logic. Oh, to be young and naive again.
9. Squeezing everything I own into one half of a miniscule room
Ugh, I miss the creativity required to effectively store things under my bed and within every single available inch of space on my side of the room. Plastic bins, rolling carts and over-the-door organizers — I had it all. You would think that this experience encouraged me to be a minimalist, but I think it had an inverse effect. Why learn to pack as little as you possibly can when you can instead subject both yourself and your parents to the most grueling move-in and move-out as possible?
10. Everything — but also nothing at all
It's my fourth year, and I am nostalgic. I see first-years walking around Grounds and yearn for the same feeling of freshness and excitement that I can sense brimming from them. Then I think back to the feeling of waking up inside my dorm room on a chilly morning and walking to classes I actively disliked, and I am immediately sick — it is genuinely a visceral reaction. But then again, just as quickly as I gagged thinking about the horrors of first year, my mind wanders right back to my first-year self, and I feel sentimental. I am stuck in between these two alternating extremes for perpetuity.
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