(Dis)Orientation

Thursday through Monday was Freshman orientation, which was accurately described to me as "summer camp with homework in the distance". It's been exhausting in that we had events planned for us for the whole day, mostly varied forms of "mixer" games and speeches about drugs, sex, and community at school. The school's notorious drug culture has already shown its face, with incoming students bonding over conversations about pot. Every night howls and screams are heard in the distance, and you'd be hard-pressed to walk through the quad without walking through a cloud of smoke of various smells. I've managed to make friends with people without it being based on our enthusiasm for drug use, or our staunch opposition to it. We usually find ourselves wandering around campus, wondering aloud about where everyone else is, and then hearing stomping feet and tambourines coming towards us. While wandering around last night, we witnessed something that seemed to sum up The College pretty well: On the lawn near us, two people were practicing the violin together, playing beautiful music under the dim lights, while across from us in the quad a resounding holler went up that either meant someone had just chugged a ton of alcohol or taken the biggest hit of their life. (I'm assuming the latter) I'm already under the impression that a lot of these people are honestly spending $40,000+ a year just to do drugs. And plenty are here just to argue with drug users. I think this will settle down a bit now that returning students have arrived, and they aren't as excited by the no-parents-no-authority-let's do drugs concept as first year students are. The serious people are here now, and everyone who took this place to lightly has probably disappeared since last year.