As the sun sets on a typically humid North Carolina Sunday, a general sigh is heard throughout Duke University’s East Campus.
For many, it is a breath of relief: we survived O-Week! For others, however, this may feel like the last free gulp of air before our freshman fears come to realization. Starting August 29, we will be hitting the books and the library—both foreign experiences after senioritis and summer vacation have left us wary as to how far our attention spans can stretch.
The concept of going to class this week is daunting, but an overwhelming sense of readiness seems to couple the trepidation felt around campus.
Freshman Elissa Levine said on dipping her toes into Blue Devil academia: “I’m nervous, but I feel prepared.”
What exactly happened this week to give us any sense of preparedness for our first semester here at Duke?
Orientation week acted as a wake up call that we are no longer in high school, and that senioritis does not exist here. At convocation, both President Richard Brodhead and Steve Nowicki, dean and vice provost of undergraduate education, stressed to our class that we must not be afraid of failure as it is pivotal to success. Programs such as True Blue taught us about how to stay safe and properly navigate through the murky blue water that is Duke’s social scene, and meetings with academic advisors guaranteed that the incoming students will walk into classes they can (hopefully) handle.
I spoke to students in the class of 2015 while hanging out at Marketplace, the East Campus bus stop, and the Freeman Center to see how people feel about starting school after orientation week. Below are what I found to be the common denominators of the freshman viewpoints of Duke after spending a week on campus sans any academic responsibility:
- 1,700 freshmen on the same schedule leads to an interesting experience on the buses to West Campus.
- Shooters!!!!!!!.…Extrapolate from that what you will.
- Marketplace: We still don’t understand the food plan, but we love Wallace the omelette guy!
- Everyone is from California, New York, or New Jersey, and they all know each other.
- Thanks to Maya Angelou, we can tell our parents we did something other than just partying all week.
- Duke students will do anything for a free T-shirt.
- Convocation taught us that we could turn our heads both left and right.
Having a week to get acclimated with roommates, dorms and a general sense of direction was extremely useful, and I think the Class of 2015 now feels officially oriented to life at Duke. Not only will we enter classrooms knowing where they are, but we will also have a few friendly faces twenty rows up in Economics 51 who can lend us notes if we cannot see the blackboard off in the distance.
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