By Brenda Szaro

For incoming freshmen, the summer before college is usually spent shopping, preparing for dorm life, packing and fitting in last minute goodbyes to family and friends. But, before jumping into independence, you are required to attend orientation, the wonderful introduction to college where you must engage in collaborative activities with your new classmates and listen to monotonous adults explain how great your life is about to become.

In my opinion, orientation is a time-consuming chore.

My mother had scolded my negativity, and promised the two-day event would help me make friends, get acquainted with the campus and feel more comfortable to leave home.

While orientation did help me figure out the campus, I left without any information on how the dining halls functioned, where the laundry rooms were, how to receive mail, or any social tips that the orientation leaders could not to talk about.

While one could argue that orientation supplied a lot of information for new students, the execution and delivery of the content made it hard to remember. Instead, if we had listened to various orientation segments in a brighter room for shorter periods of time, I believe it would have sparked more student interest.

Besides their lack of information and social tips, the orientation leaders did try their hardest to make it a fun experience. However, their attempts came off as forced and overwhelming.

Personally, as a shy introvert with a lack of eagerness to, for example, cheer at 8 a.m. in the middle of Boston, I wish orientation included more events that could have been shared with my parents Keeping in mind that every university had orientation, I searched for the will to sit with other people at the lunch hours, and to get excited for the new chapter of my life, but it just kept going away.

During our academic advising groups, time was broken up to help each student with course registering and I was the last one to meet with an advisor. This resulted in a poorly made schedule that I struggled to change during the summer, and while I can’t point blame to one individual person for this mishap, I can blame the orientation schedule itself. Giving around an hour for introductions, schedules and questions, just wasn’t enough. If giving more time depending on group sizes, every student would have been able to have the schedule they wanted.

As orientation came to a close, I was glad for it to be over, but also left with a sense of fear. I had submitted al the required paperwork, money and applications, and now only had the actual college part left to go through.

I couldn’t say I was going into college with more knowledge about the university, but I had a small amount of comfort in knowing where my expectations were supposed to be held. I knew joining clubs and getting involved on campus would make the experience less painful, and that’s exactly what I did. I took the initiative to get to know and like my campus, and found the classes enjoyable and the professors to be understanding.

Still, orientation itself taught me to be comfortable eating alone, keeping myself awake for long periods of time, and how to share a dorm with a random stranger, and for that I’ll always be thankful.