Those poor Freshmen don’t even have a clue.


For the last two years i’ve been involved in move in, first as a student in the middle of hurricane floyd carting my stuff trip by trip up to the fifth floor of Kelly and then in that same building the next year trying to keep things orderly through pouring rain and hard beating sun. Here in my third year, i am finally disconnected from the class slowly seeping into the precious cracks of my campus that have been so dry and empty all summer. I would rather not caulk them in with this endless stream of fresh faces. I do not want lines in the book store. I do not want people milling around in the lobby of the theatre. I do not want to bob and weave through a crowd on their way to the cafeteria because they only know how to travel in herds.

Ironic that i work in admissions, isn’t it? Today i was in the bookstore pricing my textbooks and all around me parents were gasping at prices and tellings their students what’s what as they silently looked over their shoulders and stewed. It all seemed crude to me, pudgy pushy parents edging past me in the aisles trying to take control of a situation that they could hardly hope to dent, while their student idly followed with shopping baskets dangling behind them. Do you know that parents often fill out applications for their students here in the office? I might be a momma’s boy by some standards, but she never touched the interiour of an app, and you had better believe that i picked up all of my books myself with my own money.

I suppose i just don’t really understand it… the crash of over two thousand new students swamping my campus with questions and with too-wide eyes and with their domineering parents, secretly scoping for attractive people or where they might go to hang out tonight. Why i am i working for this perpetually in-motion machine that greedily sucks in student after student and pumps out cookie cut graduates every year? Because, i suppose, somewhere in the middle the push of getting in and the pull of getting out (or perhaps the opposite) – everything balances out perfectly and all you do is float until the gravity of the situation takes over for you again.


I am not there yet; i’m just about to be $435 closer to getting my feet off the ground.