Move-in week overwhelming for first-year student

Welcome Week was a lot more difficult than I thought it would be.

As a student plunging into the vast unknown world of college life, I came to USD pretty clueless about what might lie ahead for me. All summer – and, in all honesty, every year of high school – I was shaking with anticipation and excitement for a change of lifestyle and scenery.

Simply put, my first week of college ranks as one of the longest weeks I have ever experienced. Don’t get me wrong, I have loved living independently, surrounded by new opportunities and people.

The first few days, though, were especially overwhelming and stressful, and could have been planned differently.

First off, as I was driving to pick up the keys to my dorm, people were standing on the side of the road handing me items left and right.

I cannot simultaneously drive forward and juggle bags of novelty gifts and shirts I will probably never wear. Not to mention this was probably not safe to try to do.

On top of that, a man with a giant video camera was blatantly filming me when I happened to wake up at
5 a.m. to drive four hours, not expecting to have to look presentable and camera-ready.

I feel it would be much more efficient if first-years could choose between two days to move in and make any freebie items open for the taking, rather than forcing them upon people.

Also, I need to mention the list of events occurring over the course of the weekend. This list happened to be a full seven pages, with something going on virtually every hour of the day, along with many occasions happening late through the weekdays after classes had actually begun.

Yes, I came to college for an education. I had no say in the matter, but an increased activity fee doesn’t mean you can constantly bombard me with large social gatherings and somehow think I can attend them all and still feel sane. As an introverted individual with social anxiety, loud, crowded parties where I might meet a few people who I will probably never see again, are not enticing.

Instead, encourage small group settings with students who live on the same floor or are in similar courses to build meaningful, long-lasting relationships. Those kind of connections will make the sometimes difficult transition even smoother for some people.

I was not able to fully ease into the college routine until after all of those excessive Welcome Week plans had finished.

I was finally able to get a feel for how college is on a regular basis.

The schedule of events and manner of going about them does have its benefits, such as the helpfulness of others when moving bulky items up to my fourth floor dorm and the talented performers who came, but the school could definitely improve for upcoming years in order to appeal to more students and make the change less overwhelming.

They need to put the “Welcome” back into Welcome Week.

(Photo: Hundreds of first-year students crowd into the DakotaDome for a convocation ceremony Aug. 21. Malachi Petersen / The Volante)