Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024 marked the first day of fall. From this date forward, we can expect more than a mere change in season.
The first official day of fall is indicative of cooler temperatures, crunchy leaves and earlier sunsets. We can also expect to see and hear a shift in the social atmosphere at North Carolina State University.
I’ve observed a trend already as a first-year student, brushing past the chilling shoulders of classmates on my gloomy walk to class. I stare into the empty faces of my peers who’ve become increasingly occupied by their studies and disinterested in making social connections.
Most upperclassmen have become accustomed to this trend as the first few weeks of being on campus loses its edge. The freshman feeling of “this is just like the movies” begins to wear off.
My friend Bella Bryant, a first-year political science major, can especially attest to this.
“So far my experience at college has aligned with my expectations, aside from the lackluster party scene. The parties depicted in the movies are far different than in real life, with loud music contrasted with the ones I saw here at NC State. The lack of dancing and excessive people standing on the wall has turned me off of them,” Bryant said.
As expectations are disappointed, the thrill of being away from home, away from your parents, spending late nights with friends, and sleeping all day fades away. The stark reality of “I’m in college now and I have work to do” sets in, and all of us first-year students are in for a rude awakening.
The transition from summer to fall is a seamless one. Here in North Carolina, it flows as such: One week the daily average temperature is 100 degrees, two weeks it drops to 90, a few weeks after that it drops to 80 degrees.
As the summer progresses the average daily temperature continues to fall until you look up and it’s finally fall. Seamless right? The transition from high school to college isn’t quite as seamless.
Sarah Barr, a first-year engineering student and dear friend of mine, anticipated that the transition from high school to college would be difficult.,
“Honestly I was scared, I didn’t think I was gonna make any friends. I didn’t think I was gonna make any close friends especially. And I thought the work was going to be unbearable lowkey.”
College to high school is a drastic transition. It’s like the average daily temperature jumping from 100 degrees for nine consecutive months to 65 degrees in just three months. Over the past few weeks, I’ve watched as the free time I once enjoyed during the final months of high school dwindles to just a few hours a week in college.
With the first five weeks of college in the rearview, I’ve realized the adjustment to college is everything I thought it’d be. Yet, there is still so much more to it I had not considered.
My classes are short but go by quickly, there’s a lot of information to digest all at once and I can hardly understand my professors. I want to get involved and there’s so much to do but the meetings all overlap; I either go to one full meeting or two half meetings with a 15-minute walk to get from one to the other.
There are a million different people to make friends with but every new friend I meet has evening classes. I’m the only one who has class in the morning and into the early afternoon. And to add insult to injury I realized everyone who warned me that long-distance relationships don’t work was sadly right.
Not everyone comes to college with expectations though, some of us are as carefree as Hannah Komukyeya, a first-year computer science major, who shares that they came into college with an open mind.
“ I didn’t have many expectations going into college, I simply came in with an open mind. Now that I’m here and I’ve gotten acclimated to this new environment and found my people, I want to get involved in more organizations outside of the ones I joined to find my community,” Komukyeya said.
Not all of us can be as easygoing as Hannah because college is about everyone navigating their unique path.
Thus, as I’ve come to realize, alongside fellow first years college is about prioritizing the things that are important to you. You can not allow yourself to be too distracted or stressed about one aspect of life that you lose sight of everything else there is to enjoy in college.
Classes are hard, that’s what late-night homework and study sessions with friends are for. Club meetings and on-campus events all have overlapping time slots, that’s why it’s important to prioritize the extracurriculars that most align with your interests (you can’t do everything). It may feel like there isn’t a lot of time to look after your health, so it’s important to take breaks away from your studies to look after yourself.
As fall approaches I’ve ultimately realized there are a lot of expectations for what the college experience is like. Although I can’t attest to whether every one of them is accurate or not, what I can say is that your individual experience isn’t defined by one thing or another. College is what you make of it, no matter what circumstances arise.
