Observations of a Senior at Freshmen Orientation

Last night I got called in to work to fill in for a co-worker who was sick. My responsibility was to setup the AV equipment for Freshmen Orientation for the class of 2014.

I went to a total of 3 different presentations, and I noticed several things that I was not aware of when I attended my Freshmen Orientation back in 2006.

One of the first things that I noticed was that all these kids were dressed to impress. I did not see a single person in just jeans in a tee-shirt, and nobody had messy hair. From my years here at CSU, I can easily say this is no surprise. For the first week of every semester I see similar behavior from my fellow classmates.

The presentations that I attended were on Alcohol use at CSU. I do not remember any sort of presentation when I attended my orientation. From what I remember of my orientation, we just say in big circles, and shared facts about each person to get to know each other. We also walked around campus and learned facts about the campus as well as oriented ourselves with our soon to be new surroundings.

While I was in these presentations I also noticed groups forming, similar to how I would imagine the same groups would have formed in high school. I could tell each group had its “popular” section, its “nerd” section, and all groups in between. While this can happen in such a small group such as an orientation group, and even a high school class, this does not happen in a university with 25,000 students. From my time at CSU, I have not seen any groups that I would say is the “popular” group. I see 2 main groups. The first group seems to be people that currently live or used to live in the dorms together or who have been roommates, and groups of people who have the same major.

Personally I have 2 sets of friends that I hang out with. The first group is all people that I lived in the dorms with, and a few of their friends. The second group is co-workers.

It seems as though while Freshmen Orientation may change from year to year, the students who attend it are all pretty much the same; kids fresh out of high school, who do not know what college is about. Yet.