Thoughts on the First Day of Classes.

I wince a bit and stretch myself out after the sun poking through my fourth story window on the first day of classes wakes me up. I notice immediately that once again my White Stripes poster has failed to stay tacked on my wall. This made me slightly more grumpy than normal as I rolled out of bed, but not nearly as grumpy as I was when I realized it was 9:30AM. “Holy freakin’ Christ…I slept through my first class.”

Sigh…..I’m sure we all have some interesting stories from our first day of this Fall semester. This is my third year here and my first as an upperclassman. It’s strange how now everything seems so familiar to me, yet at the same time so much has changed. I notice it whenever I look out my window and see how gutted Tobey Hall is, or whenever I visit friends’ apartments off campus. To tell the truth, I feel kind of old.

Although much has certainly changed over my three years here, some things will always be the same. The first day of classes always runs through the same routine. Beginning of course with the mad dash to get all of the free crap they give away in the Quad. This year they gave away some handy trinkets, such as a small squeezable football and a pen/highlighter. Then there was the obligatory weird/almost useless give away: the Frisbee that they printed this year’s CUAC calendar on.

Blah…so far the first day of classes makes a pretty bland story right? Well of course it does! It’s hard for me to think that for so many people this is their first time going through these same motions I’ve been through three times now, especially the god-awful free food giveaway extravaganza in front of the library every year. The school did sort of raise the stakes a bit this time around though. I have to give OAS some props in having free cotton candy and ice cream this time instead of just tons of cold cuts and hamburger buns.

On the other hand, that MC they had talking awkwardly though a microphone and putting his Ipod on shuffle every once in a while was truly, truly awful (Hey, who ended up winning that free Ipod, or signing up for the Phoneothon? Anyone? Beuler?). That awful MC was not the only joke of the day. I hope my friends and I weren’t the only ones who noticed the hilariously unfortunate misspelling of “WELCOME” on Jazzman’s sandwich board (picture hopefully coming soon). Thankfully when I walked past Jazzman’s again later on that evening and they had corrected their egregious mistake.

Heh, at any rate after that first day I am sure it’s safe to say that this year will be full of opportunities for me to vomit my opinions and observations of interest onto the internet. Welcome to Pwneonta.