The First Year Experience: Investigating Scripps life at the ground level

Coming back from break is hard, but for some reason it wasn’t too bad this time. It could be that we finally have access to Pitzer brunch again, or maybe the freedom to leave on a weeknight without having to undergo a CIA-level investigation from our parents. It could be that we were all tired of sleeping in rooms by ourselves and eating homemade meals, though that seems unlikely. In my opinion, the best part of coming back is how everyone has reacted to the weather. In the first sunny days back on campus, Midwesterners and Northeasterners were seen crying on Jaqua as they grabbed handfuls of green grass and held it up in the light of the 80ºF afternoon sun, continually questioning how something so beautiful could exist. A few feet away, those from Southern California loudly complained, “This is nice, but it was SO much warmer where I’m from.”

Returning to campus was an adventure. Walking back into my room after an entire month away, with all of my roommates lugging in bags and boxes and stuffing clothes into drawers that really could not contain them brought immediate flashbacks to move-in day back in August. Some notable differences were that we now knew where the front door of our hall was, the afternoon air was at a temperature that could not have easily fried eggs, and, as one of my roommates noted, we could be openly rude to each other on the first day. Lovingly, of course.

With the new semester has come a lot of adjustments. Some have been sad, like the death of Pitzer’s Mediterranean Wrap Wednesdays, which my roommates and I still mourn weekly. Southwestern wraps are simply not the same. Others have been confusing, like having everyone come back from abroad (“She lives here? In this hall? I’ve literally never seen her before”). For the most part, however, spring semester has brought positive changes. We’re done with Core 1, for example, and never have to think about Foucault again (probably). Because Writing 50 is over, we actually got to have complete choice in three of our classes this semester, which felt like an unprecedented act of liberation.

New classes are, in themselves, an entire adventure. Even after weeks of attending and going in for office hours at the same rooms, I still get lost on the way to some of my classes. (Why do we need to have so many similar-looking hallways at Steele? I promise it doesn’t add anything to the experience. We could at least paint them differently. I’m a big fan of color-coding.)
And so it begins. I expect that this semester will bring all sorts of surprises in all sorts of ways. There will be a lot of Parks and Recreation (and probably a lot of crying about Parks and Recreation ending), a lot of working hard on assignments I won’t remember by next semester, and a lot of making memories with friends both new and old. Maybe I’ll even meet people from other campuses this semester, but that’s a story for another time. For now, all I have to say is welcome back! I can’t wait to see what the semester will hold for us.