With just about two months between graduation and move-in day, I experienced a major period of denial. I kept telling myself and others that, “I [was] sooo ready to go to college,” but I really didn’t know what IC had in store for me. It took me until two weeks ago to fully comprehend the fact that I am not going home and I do have to adjust to living without the conveniences- and annoyances (which are a bit easier to deal with)- of living with my family.

[1]
See Caylena’s [2] Facebook page.

My college career began in the nontraditional way of Community Plunge, a special program that focuses on building leadership and friendship through small group community service. I could not have imagined a better way to start off my time here than by “taking the plunge,” even though I had to live alone in my double room for three days, waiting fervently for my roommate to arrive. Not only was my experience as a plunger exciting and fun, but I also was able to meet so many new people and had the opportunity to make a complete fool of myself, on my second day here, in front of the rest of my fellow plungers and the leaders as I participated in Travelin’ Max’s virgin margarita drinking contest.

The transition from Community Plunge to Continuing Orientation began with the long-awaited arrival of my roommate, Lizz. Moving Lizz in proved to be a success, and so began the task of learning to live with someone. I am probably very lucky with my room assignment, not only because my roomie is one of my closest friends on campus, but also because our room happens to be right across the hall from the laundry room! So, even though I wasn’t placed in any of my “top choices” on my residential preference form, I am incredibly satisfied with my room in the Upper Quads, compared to the annoying room in the Towers, which I resided in during orientation.

Attending the last July orientation session and being an exploratory student is not a fantastic combination during scheduling, so from the ride home from orientation with my mother up until the Tuesday night before the beginning of classes, when I learned I was allowed to change my schedule, I complained about the lack of desirable classes that I would be taking. Because of the registration system and my slow Internet account, I was able to add and drop classes until I had much better classes. With the start of classes, the reality of college was beginning to finally sink in.

Adjusting to a weekly class schedule and multiple group meetings, on-campus lectures or concerts, and the stairs/walking everywhere are still conscious battles for me. Time management, the freedom, and the overwhelming number of opportunities available to me are things that all college students have to deal with, but are probably some of the most challenging aspects of freshmen life. For many of us, it is the first time that we really have to do things for ourselves, and don’t have others to rely on to tell us how many things to join, when to go to class or when to do homework. I still am trying to work out which study habits work best for me, and how to keep the Internet from distracting me from my work, because everyone knows how addicting [3] Facebook and iChat can be. As it is, I still stay up half the night attempting to finish assignments because my friends so easily sidetrack me, especially when they suck me into driving to Syracuse, since I am one of the few freshmen who paid the extraordinarily high price for a parking permit.

Before coming to school, I was very anxious about making friends. I had never really needed to make friends because I went to a school where the social structure was pretty set, so friends were not an issue. But coming here and not knowing each person I saw made me nervous and also made me hate orientation because most of the people in my session were tense and trying to fit into nonexistent standards. This idea really disturbed me because I had not found any people at orientation that were likely to be my real friends at college, and I felt discouraged. I do have friends now, though, and it is not actually as difficult as I thought it would be to make friends, seeing as how I waved to and knew so many people on Sunday at Applefest and the people I was with kept telling me that I knew everyone.

Of course, recognizing people can be a good thing or a bad thing, which brings this discussion to the topic of choice on many college campuses, none other than Facebook. Most people know that Facebook is a website for networking between people based on your college, school, job, and as of recently, your region. Well, I know for myself, the first thing I did after registering my IC email address with ITS was register it with Facebook. I then proceeded to search for my high school friends and join the most random groups. Throughout the summer, I made friends with some new classmates via Facebook and also added and was added by random people that I still do not know. Here in lies the problem- while I did talk to some people and meet them in real life once everyone was moved in, there were still a whole slew of folks that I hadn’t met. So now when I recognize people either in the dining hall, or elsewhere, I sometimes can’t tell if I know them in real life or if I had seen them online. Despite this awkwardness evoked by the website, the networking can also be quite useful, as most students have an account, so if you need to contact someone in a class or for whatever reason, it is usually fairly simple to find them on Facebook and send them a message.

With all of these observations and occurrences, I am settling in to my new life in Ithaca. As the days pass, weeks pass, and now it is October, which is sort of unbelievable because I have been here for over a month and it feels like a few days. What is there to say about college and Ithaca? I did not know what to expect coming in, and I still can’t predict anything that will happen because my experiences thus far have been so diverse and random. What I do know, despite my intense workload and the crazy erratic weather, is that I love it here at Ithaca College.