Eyewitness: Getting through my Clarion orientation
by Jacob Oberdorf
May 31, 2011
Over the past two years, members of the Class of 2011 have spent a lot of their time thinking about life after high school by taking the SATs, visiting colleges and sending out transcripts in hopes that they receive a letter confirming that they are accepted into college.
Now that we are in the final stretch of the school year, most seniors plan to further their education certain of where whey will be attending school this fall. Over this long process of applying and ultimately getting accepted to college, the line that I have heard most has been “going from high school to college is one of the biggest adjustments you will have to make in your life.” This statement really proved to be true when I recently attended spring orientation at Clarion University of Pennsylvania.
The first thing that I did as I entered the Gemmell Student Center have my picture taken for what I believe will be my student ID for the four years I spend at Clarion. A shocking thing about this ID card is that we (everyone in my orientation group) were told that this ID card would be more important than our driver’s license while we are on the Clarion Campus. This one card allows me to get into my dorm, to use the student recreation center, to buy food at the cafeteria, and to check out books in the library, along with many other services and tasks that I don’t even know about yet.
After our ID pictures were taken, all of the incoming students and their parents gathered in a multi-purpose room to hear from the president of Clarion and two professors. As I was listening to these three speeches, I could not help to be reminded of those old college movies that stereotype all professors. First, when the president was introduced, the Clarion fight song began to play. I found this musical fanfare very corny and rolled my eyes at my mom as this intro was happening.
But listening to her speech, I realized I’m in for an awakening this fall. The main point she emphasized was that we are now adults and everyone at the university is going to treat us like adults. Most “kids” can’t wait to hear those words. However, I admit her speech shell-shocked me a bit.
After the president spoke, a professor talked to us about managing our time. The first thing he asked us was how many of us spend over two hours a night studying. Not one hand was raised in the room. He then told us that professors expect students to spend around two hours every night studying a subject. If we have three classes a day, that’s six hours! Since not one hand was raised, I am sure I was not the only one in the room who was more than a bit shocked.
The third speaker was an English professor who came across to me as the stereotypical English professor in the movies. This man was a very enthusiastic man who compared general education courses to dessert at Thanksgiving dinner. I still don’t understand what the point of his speech was. This man was all over the place. He reminded me most of the Clark Griswold from the “National Lampoon” vacation series.
After his speech, the incoming freshmen and their parents were separated into groups. The parents had to stay and listen to lectures about financial aid while we students got to know each other. Each group had an orientation leader. My group’s leader was a junior at Clarion this past year. She had us start off by playing an icebreaker game where each of us had to state our names and one interesting fact about ourselves.
At this time everyone in my group was still nervous about saying something stupid; that is until two kids in our group got into an argument because they found out that they were in rival Eagle Scout Troops. At that moment it seemed that everybody began to come out of their shells. (I guess we are all comfortable with drama.)
The second game we played was a name game. We had to think of an animal that started with the same letter as our first names so we would have an easier time remembering each other’s names. By the end of this game we had Eagle Erin, Snake Seth, Salamander Scott, Jaguar Joe, Beaver Ben, Dolphin Deb, Christy Cat, Mallory Moose, Anaconda Angela, Jellyfish Jacob, Snake Steve, Walrus Walter, Bear Brent and Crane Kevin. Kevin had a hard time figuring out an animal that started with K. I hope he does better when classes start.
After this exercise, we met up with our parents in the cafeteria. I have good news for all you underclassmen. When you get to college, there is no more chicken and sauce. When I walked into the cafeteria, I found an Italian food bar, a sub bar, a hamburger bar and a dessert bar where we could make our own ice cream cones. Upon feasting my eyes on this, well, this feast, I began to think that I can really get used to this.
After lunch we split with our parents again and listened to the head police officer at Clarion who delivered a strict speech advising us not to climb to the top of a lamp post and swing our shirts above our heads like a helicopter. He told some very humorous stories along with some statistics that made us understand that we don’t want to get on his bad side.
Once this “lay down the law” speech was over, I finally arrived at the last and most exciting part of my day – scheduling. Luckily for me, my communications adviser had a pre-made schedule that really made life easy for me.
Overall, spring orientation excited me about starting another chapter in my life and leaving some of my friends behind. I found out that college is going to be a very big adjustment, but I know it will all be worth it. As of now I can call myself a Clarion University of Pennsylvania Golden Eagle. I even have the ID badge to prove it.
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