The First-Year Experience: brought to you by a real-life Scripps first year

By Melanie Biles '18
Design Editor

 

These last weeks have brought a multitude of major developments to life at Scripps. Some have been good — the pool has extended hours! My tanlines are back! Others have been not-so-good, like the lack of Grammys awarded to Taylor Swift. (This is a travesty on a major level, and I refuse to back down on that point.) There are uncomfortable happenings, like the Style music video, which I refuse to discuss out of anger and disappointment. Then there are the unexpected changes, like the fact that my roommate watched a full season of Supernatural in six days. (For those of you following along at home, that’s 880 minutes of angsty ghost stories.)

The most exciting thing about the last few weeks, however, is that Scripps has finally started to feel like a place of comfort. We’ve been here for a while, so it makes sense that we’ve gotten used to it, but it’s interesting to see how the level of comfort has progressed. As of the end of first semester, many felt like we had a pretty good handle on things, but we were still just fetuses in the womb of college experience. Now we’re newborns, and this metaphor is not turning out the way I wanted it to.

Let me try again. A few months ago, we did not know the people we now call our best friends. We did not know how to say “Balch” or “Malott,” let alone find them on campus. Nobody had learned about the magic that is Pitzer brunch, and everyone still thought that they had to wear real outfits to class. Not to say that any one of us is an expert on college life now, but we at least know that wearing your keys on a neck lanyard isn’t the coolest thing you could do. We’re learning, growing and figuring things out one step at a time.

And though we once thought it impossible, Scripps is familiar now. We know some of its quirks, though we still learn something new every day. We know where to find our favorite meals, our favorite study spots, the best places to do our Core readings and the best places to pretend to do our Core readings until we instead fall asleep. I know that GJW’s automatic doors, though in my opinion a security risk, can be helpful when you’re trying to bring Christmas presents to your friends. I’ve met enough people that I can be fairly confident that I will find someone to sit with if I go to dinner by myself. My roommates and I know each others’ favorite Motley drinks, pizza toppings, snack foods and TV shows. This is comfort. This is familiarity. It may not be home yet, but at least nobody’s clicking her ruby heels to to get out.