For many freshmen, college might be the first time that they are away from the care of their parents. It might be the first time that they find themselves sharing a bathroom with a dozen other people. Or perhaps most importantly, it is the first time that they find themselves away from home for an extended period of time. Like many experiences, the beginning of the college journey is also an ending—the ending of their familiar life at home. For the widely different backgrounds of each Washington University student, it is only natural for every one to experience leaving home a little differently.
International students often come thousands and thousands of miles away to come to Washington University. Phoebe Tran, a freshman from Hanoi, Vietnam, is not unfamiliar to the idea of being far away from home. She has spent time studying in Canada and Singapore, for primary school and high school, respectively. Before coming to Washington University, however, she said that she spent much more time with her family. In the coming years, she might only be able to go home once every year. Tran thinks that an international student has it harder than a local student in some aspects because she is flying halfway across the world and must be prepared to do most things on her own. Even calling home is proving to be a challenge—one that Tran resolves by simply stating that she might not call home as often.
On the other side of the spectrum are students like freshman Lorel Huelsmann. For these students, Washington University is a walk, a train ride, or a short drive away. She is from St. Louis, MO and lives only forty minutes away from campus. She agreed with Tran that a major difference lies in how far each has to travel.
“Distance is a big issue,” Huelsmann said. “I can go home whenever I want and all my family is still here.” Despite how close she lives, Huelsmann pointed out that some things about her freshman moving-away experience really are not all that different from Tran’s, aside from the mileage that they racked up.
“I feel just like everyone else because my friends were going to different places so I had to say good-bye to them just like everybody else.”
One advantage she did enjoy? No shipping was needed to move all her stuff here.
John Cho, from Seoul, South Korea, flew in with his mother and between the two of them, managed to bring only four suitcases with which to pack all his belongings. His mother didn’t even bring a single suitcase of her own so that they could avoid paying for extra luggage.
Moving away far from home provides not only a physical barrier, but a cultural one as well. Tran noted that international students had to worry about issues such as immigration documents—things that local students hardly needed to worry about. She also said that she found the banking system to be complicated and tipping to be an unfamiliar custom.
“When do I tip? When do I not tip? How much do I tip?” Tran asked. Cho experienced a cultural conundrum of his own when he arrived.
“Before I arrived at WashU, I ate at Ted Drewes [Frozen Custard]. They served my ice cream upside down. I tried to flip it over again but then the ice cream fell to the ground.”
The international students found many common threads among themselves. Many of them had traveled abroad from their native countries to pursue their educations prior to Washington University and they seemed to take the experience of traveling upwards of 8,000 miles in stride. All seemed to be excited to experience the cultural diversity that Washington University offered. Still, that didn’t stop some students from wondering what they should do if they were sick or encountered other problems, like the one faced by Elaine Chow from Hong Kong.
“UA [United Airlines] lost my suitcases.” She said.
Perhaps some problems are indeed universal.
With boxes crowding your floor space and a stranger in the bed right next to you, your dorm room may not seem, at first, like the opportune place to spend your first formative year as a student at Washington University. It’s an experience that every student must endure and, in the end, that every student comes to cherish. A few simple tips can help you cut through the awkward silence and make it that much easier to call Wash. U. home.
Be open to opening your door.
Throw away the school-supply list from Bed, Bath, & Beyond and even the one the Congress on the South 40 mailed out to each incoming freshman. The most important school supply list is right here: one doorstop. Prop open your door, and the people will soon follow. All you really need is a bit of patience, time and of course a degree of openness.
“Be willing to take a risk and step outside of your comfort zone…and meet new people from different backgrounds,” Daniel Minot, a residential advisor for Koenig House’s third floor, said. Tons of students are in your exact same position and want to interact with their fellow classmates. And yes, that actually does include you too.
Dabble, dabble and hey if there’s time, dabble some more.
This one is almost constantly shoved down freshmen’s throats but it really can’t be emphasized enough—sign up for all of the student activities that interest you. This year the Fall Activities Fair will be held in the Brookings Quadrangle on Wednesday, September 3 at 4:30 p.m.
While there, sign up to receive e-mails from any clubs and organizations that even mildly spark your interest. In doing so, you just might find others who share the same interests as you. And, if you don’t end up loving the activity, feel free to unsubscribe from the e-mails. You’re never again going to have an opportunity to try so many things and completely bomb at them.
Bribery is sometimes condoned, but it’s always welcomed.
Making new friends can oftentimes be difficult when freshmen hide out in their dorm rooms. If you’re not willing to venture out, welcome people in. But the question is inevitably raised—how?
“Have popcorn in your room and play music loudly. You want to invite your floormates in, not block them out,” sophomore Michelle Kolodny said. Try to play music that you think appeals to the greatest number of freshmen.
Choose your attire wisely. You might become what you eat.
At another university an innocent freshman saw his orientation as just another day at school. Thus he wore one of his favorite t-shirts—a shirt with an image of a Reese’s bar on the front. After which his fellow classmates subsequently referred to him as “Reese’s.” During the first few weeks try to curb the urge to wear your shirts that have Tootsie Rolls or Butterfinger bars on them.
You’re a freak, a super freak, but it’s ok!
Oftentimes, new students put up a fake front. “Sure, I love basketball!” the hand-eye uncoordinated kid claims, or “Of course I watch Grey’s Anatomy. Who doesn’t?” the PBS junky asserts.
Don’t be afraid to make a fool of yourself. If you don’t exactly click with some people because “they’re too cool for you,” don’t fret. There are plenty of other freaks just like you. Check the South Forty. I hear there are tons of them hiding out there.
Facebook is a Web site, not a lifestyle choice
“Facebook is a good first step, but it could never actually compare to meeting someone in person,” Andrea Stevens, a freshman, said. Some students tend to get caught in the Facebook rut.
Ditch the computer every once in a while and check out the campus. Grab the person you’ve been messaging for the past few weeks and head over to Ursa’s Café or the new Danforth University Center. You’ll soon realize that a handshake is always better than a poke.
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We are all familiar with the stresses of the college application process. Now picture this: amongst acceptance letters you receive an ambiguous offer from your dream school to be placed on a wait-list. You accept the offer but send in a deposit to another university and move on with college preparations. Two months later, a phone call informs you of acceptance to the aforementioned school but gives you just 24 hours to accept or reject this offer of admission. For more and more students, the above scenario is becoming a reality.
Though waitlists have been used in college admissions for many years, admissions officers at Wash. U. relied more on the wait-list than they have in previous recent years. Nanette Tarbouni said that the wait-list has been used more extensively to help manage enrollment and that more colleges made extensive use of the waitlist this year than ever before. We understand that limited housing and class space make it necessary for universities to wait list students and that application trends call for increased use of these lists, but with a higher volume of students placed in the difficult position of being wait-listed at Wash. U., it’s time to reevaluate the University’s efforts to reach out to those students in order to make the experience as easy as possible.
Tarbouni explained that the use of the wait-list is empowering to students because when they are accepted off of the wait-list they are able to decide whether or not to accept admission. It is undeniable, though, that being accepted up-front is even more empowering to students who then have a full grasp of their options for where to attend college. Students who find themselves on the wait-list are necessarily placed in a difficult position. They will be asked to make housing deposits to the Universities where they were accepted and they have to wait in indecision throughout the end of their senior year of high school. It’s impossible to know whether to start getting excited about the university where they have accepted admission or if they should continue to hold out hope of attending the university that wait-listed them. These emotions and struggles are a difficulty of wait-lists that cannot be avoided, but Wash. U. can do more to make them less intense.
Since we are not the admissions department and do not have specific numbers or information on admissions policies, it is hard to make recommendations on how to improve this process. If Wash. U. can’t provide specific data on how they are ranking students on the wait list, they need to at least explain more about their process and why it is not possible to give further information. Perhaps it really wouldn’t hurt to inform students of a general date range for when they might hear back from Wash. U., and how fast spaces are filling up. The university can help to alleviate student anxieties by being more transparent and increasing its communication with students.
Because wait-listed students have shown interest in the University and may well attend, Wash. U. needs to take the situation seriously and do its best to ease the students’ burdens. With more and more students experiencing the turmoil of a wait-listed application, relieving some of the stress from the process should be one of the admissions office’s greatest concerns. Since a completely transparent process would help students better deal with the stresses of college admissions, we owe it to them to change the way we manage our wait list.
MATT LEE EDITORIAL CARTOON
Kelly Diabagate
Freshman Press Columnist
Linda Donaldson
Freshman Press Columnist
Linda is a freshman in Arts and Sciences and can be reached by email at plainly.not@gmail.com
FRESHMAN EDITORIAL
AJ Sundar
Freshman Press Columnist
Generally, when I connect to the Internet, the first Web site I visit is Facebook. Does this sound like anyone else out there? Indeed, very few people do not have some type of social networking account. It all really started up with Myspace, but today the big site is unmistakably Facebook. It has become by far the most popular social networking Web site used by high school and college students and has consequently impacted the way we interact socially, in both positive and negative ways.
The primary intent of Facebook is to connect us to all our friends, which is a good thing. For those of us who are leaving friends behind, not only is Facebook an easier way to remain up to date with what everyone is doing, but it is also considerably less costly than phone calls.
However, Facebook also connects us to new people, which has its ups and downs. For instance, before even arriving on campus, most of us had already befriended some other students in the freshman class. Simply based on the fact that people are incoming Wash. U. students like us, we faithfully added them to our list of “friends.” From there we either went on to have brief conversations with them until we ran out of trivial generalities to talk about, or we simply checked out their pictures, hoping against all odds that we would remember them when, and if, we met them some day on campus. We engaged in this process all the while wondering if this new cyber relationship would ever develop into anything more substantial.
On the one hand, this type of Facebook use could be good because it definitely makes us less nervous. It helps to know that once we arrive on campus we might see a familiar face in the crowd, someone who has not vetoed the idea of being friends with us, since they have already befriended us on Facebook. On the other hand, friendship has now become an expandable concept. Our understanding of friendship ranges from “sister from another mother” relationships to “she seems sort of familiar” relationships. Because the idea of friendship has expanded, when we walk onto this huge campus, some of us are wondering if we have 50 Wash. U. friends, as stated on Facebook, or if it is all wishful thinking and we truly have none.
The line between friends and acquaintances has blurred somewhat, and though it gives us more room to be more sociable and forward with people we have never met in person, it can also make for the most inconvenient situations.
Consider the beginning of college. We are all excited about it. After years of planning, and fantasizing about college life, we are finally here! At last, we can go to bed as late as we want without being subject to parental rules. We can explore a variety of subjects and activities on campus and we can delve deeper into our passions. Indeed, for the majority of freshmen, college is a new beginning. For some, this means setting new goals, or working on old ones. For others, it means becoming a completely different person, a brand new “us” with an obscure past which has no place in our bright new present.
However, reinventing ourselves could be a little bit tricky when our new college friends have been getting acquainted with the old “us” for a while. On a typical Facebook page, you might find a person’s status, which generally reflects some personal aspect of their life, as well as a picture of said person, a short list of friends, and a feed of their latest activities on the site. Clearly, there is not much room for secrets and privacy. There is no hiding all our dirty little secrets when they’ve been on full display on Facebook for everyone to see. What do you do if your new friends already have a set idea of who you are, when it is really who you were? See how that could make for awkward situations?
At the end of the day, it all comes down to compromising. As it appears that most of us have chosen to befriend some people from our class, we will have to accept the consequences, both good and bad.
On the plus side, a good number of us will arrive on campus a little less nervous, knowing we might recognize some other students in the crowd. Whether these people turn out to be real friends, or just cyber friends, at least we can take comfort in the knowledge that we are not alone in our predicament, and in the conviction that we will all forge meaningful relationships here at Wash. U.
On the other hand, there will not be much room for starting college as a brand new “us.” However, college is all about growing and discovering ourselves, after all, and we will have plenty of time to grow and change over the next four years.
After staying up until 2 a.m. packing hurriedly for school, driving an exhausting six hours to reach campus, and moving all of my possessions up a flight of stairs and into my room, I was ready to unwind and relax just a bit by listening to the latest album by one of my favorite bands, art-school. Being an unlabelled indie band, they don’t have formal album releases and instead opt to distribute their music via BitTorrent (a filesharing method, not unlike a modern Limewire).
However, as soon as I started the download, I was greeted with several concurrent connection failures—Wash. U. blocks BitTorrent. Though slightly annoyed at the fact that I would now have to wait for my friend to download the file, upload it to the Web, and then have me download it, I put it to the side of my mind and signed onto AIM to talk to my friends back home—or rather, I was going to go onto AIM to talk to my friends, until I realized that the AIM client I use is also partially disabled by Wash. U.’s network. The same goes for IRC (a relatively benign chat application), and even online gaming—the network cripples almost everything on the network.
While I understand the need to stop people from unfairly hogging bandwidth and downloading illegal files, blocking nearly everything that uses an Internet connection is simply overkill. After all, even though BitTorrent can be used to illegally share files, for many it’s the only way to get access to many smaller bands’ music. Wash. U.’s policy is akin to banning all baseball bats because (despite their important use in recreational sports) they can be used to harm others.
Rather, Wash. U.’s policy ought to be about punishing the wrongdoers, and this is far from impossible or impractical.
Traffic shaping, giving priority to some applications over others, (for instance, Web browsing over BitTorrent) can be used to slow down the speed dramatically of applications such as BitTorrent so that people downloading wouldn’t slow everyone else on the network.
And though it would mean waiting awhile for my album to download, I wouldn’t mind it at all considering my current situation involves waiting indefinitely. Granted, traffic shaping does cost money and requires software to get everything set up, but it’s hardly more expensive than the kind of software needed to block almost all outgoing connections—the cheap $50 router I have at home has traffic-shaping abilities if I ever so desired to use it. At the very least, the University could open up connections slightly, so most applications would not be crippled in functionality.
As far as legality is concerned, it’s hard to make the argument that BitTorrent is the sole method of illegally-transferred files. There are plenty of download sites accessible directly through the Web, and though the selection isn’t as great as on BitTorrent, it illustrates the futility of blocking an entire application because it can be used maliciously (in the case of direct-downloads, it would entail blocking access to the Internet altogether).
Furthermore, the goal of a University administration should be to educate individuals about the correct and incorrect (as well as legally suspect) methods of using BitTorrent, and encouraging the use of filesharing as a useful means of obtaining legal files legitimately. Perhaps I’m being optimistic here, but even if education won’t perfectly solve the problem of downloading illegal files, it (along with other methods such as limiting the bandwidth of sharers to restrain the amount downloaded to a reasonable measure), would still be a much better alternative to the policies currently implemented. The current policy essentially blows up a house to kill a burglar. Perhaps in the future, a better policy can be implemented—maybe then, at least, I’ll be able to listen to my music headache-free.
Kelly is a freshman in the college of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached by e-mail at kadiabag@wustl.edu.
AJ is a freshman in Arts & Sciences and can be reached by e-mail at asunder@artsci.wustl.edu.
And perhaps most importantly, embrace all of the oddities that life in college will throw at you. Who knows? You just might discover that a pre-med major isn’t right for you—because art is more to your liking—or that the stranger sleeping in the bed next to you is your best friend, or even that Wash. U. really is the opportune place to spend that first formative year as a college student.
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