being an undergrad

just in case I'm ever a professor/teacher and forget the personal side of what people might be going through:

as a freshman:

• I started out knowing no one on the entire campus. The first few months consist of meeting lots of people, and trying to get to know the people I'd met.
• I hadn't gone to school with white people since first grade. There was a lot of new campus culture to adjust to (even just picking up phrases like "sketchy" or "I feel like" from Taryn) and a lot of people coming from a lot of different places, some of them intimidating.
• I drew big distinctions between class years: after a month into freshman year, a sophomore had still been around 10 times longer than I had, and they definitely seemed more worldy and more mature (and they probably were). Juniors (including JAs) and seniors (even older than JAs) were another world entirely. Campus organizations (the Record, WOC, WSO, CC, KAOS, etc., even CoSSaC) were intimidating institutions run by elite upperclassmen.
• Every campus event was big. The fall frosh carnival, Mountain Day, Harvest Dinner, first snow, Holiday Dinner, Winter Study(!), Winter Carnival, Spring Fling, etc. were all new and exciting. There was no time to have become jaded or for these things to have gotten old (as they eventually do).
• I had never really drunk alcohol before.
• I thought a capella was the coolest thing ever and cried when I didn't get into a group.
• I wasn't sure what I was interested in academically and took only one CS class.
• I had no idea what I wanted to do after college (though grad school was probably understood at some point)
• I couldn't read a research paper, use LaTeX, emacs, or a lot of the unix shell, the only data structure I knew was a linked list and I basically thought computers worked by magic black dust.
• I had no idea how institutions work, how the College functioned, what academia was like and the processes my profs were going through, what grad school was or the difference between a PhD and Masters

other life presences:

• big decisions/events: becoming a WOOLF leader, applying for and/or becoming a JA, going abroad, looking for summer and eventually full-time jobs or grad schools.
• constant rehearsals and concerts; almost no time to practice and definitely no time to play sports
• dating and sex: little time, but much need, to explore both
• lots of interest in campus events and controversies (WSO discussions, record articles, ephblog)
• roofing, exploring campus, learning campus secrets most of which I never told any professors (how to break into various buildings, hacking coop draw, etc.)
• constantly meeting new people, making new friends, and drifting apart from old ones over the course of four years
• feeling a certain sort of camaraderie and freedom to engage with any student on campus (e.g. streaking, WSO discussions, etc) but on the other hand being completely separated from large swaths of campus culture (e.g. sports teams, and every minor club or clique with its own identity)
• feeling pre-emptive nostalgia even during the first year (walking down spring street and realizing that eventually this would no longer "belong" to me, though I think that turned out to be shortsighted) and attaching emotional significance to every transition: dining at Mission at the end of semesters/beginnings of breaks, moving out of the entry and leaving Frosh Quad, noticing when my class became woolf leaders / JAs / seniors / alums, etc.
• never really feeling secure in my friends / social place / social abilities until very late on (e.g. feeling awkward as woolf leader and woolf staff, felt unqualified to JA because I was such a social failure)
• I didn't really understand why time management was important until junior or senior year.

other things that might be useful for current undergrads to know:

I came to college hoping to find people who were "like me" and a group of friends I could be comfortable with. Although I met a lot of cool people, I never really felt comfortable with my friends until around senior year. And a lot of the people I ended up thinking of as "like me" were in other class years, so I couldn't have even met them as a freshman if I'd wanted to (there are only so many math nerds in every class). On the other hand, lots of people in my class who I never really got to know could probably have been a lot "like me" and I just never got the chance to find out.