We found that our editorial board conversations were constantly returning to our orientation week experiences. This may seem strange, as we are now about halfway between last year’s O-week and this year’s O-week. However, some great force compelled us to keep talking about it. Perhaps it’s because orientation counselors are currently being chosen. Perhaps it’s because next year’s class is receiving their admission decisions. While it’s distinct from actual college life, O-week was simultaneously a very important Carnegie Mellon experience and didn’t end up being as big of a deal as we anticipated.
We at the editorial board had a mixed bag of O-week experiences. Though we all got friends out of it, not everyone had the easiest time. If your roommate was withdrawn, wasn’t there, or didn’t seem to like you, you started college all alone. Others got to start with a built-in friendship, or even a whole friend group if you had a social dorm floor. For those who had trouble bonding with people from their college, it was perhaps dismaying to learn that there’s no guarantee you’d make friends in your classes.
O-week was also exhausting, especially for those who tried to make it to every event. However — here’s a secret — some of us didn’t show up to events. The type-A among us couldn’t comprehend this. Of course, there’s a good reason they were telling us to go to all these events — but if you just couldn’t take it, you could always do something else. In college, people are not really keeping track of where you are anymore. We agreed that we preferred the quieter, smaller activities as opposed to the disorienting ones like Playfair and Carnegie Cup (formerly known as House Wars until 2022 — has political correctness gone too far?!).
For some, the first semester of freshman year was a continuation of O-week’s desperate search for friendship. For others, it was a relief of routine. It was hard to predict at the time which friends would stay and who we would promptly forget about; some of those who made friends in their dorm found that those friendships weren’t built on commonalities.
In our reflections, a lot of us recall the stress of believing that we had to find our best friends during O-week. But of course, college isn’t that simple and building a new support system from scratch takes time. It’s okay if your first week wasn’t great, because you have another 112 weeks to figure things out.
Most of us remember our OCs and OLs. Some of us ended up becoming pretty good friends with the OCs during O-week. One even became an OC (which was perhaps twice as overstimulating as O-week, given the week of preparation and the fact that the OCs have to carry everyone’s refrigerators up the stairs.)
And if you are going to be an orientation counselor in August, in addition to your responsibility to force people to socialize and have fun, you also have a responsibility to be chill. It’s as stressful a time for the incoming class as it was for us as first-years, and you should make sure they know it’s okay for things to take time.
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