The Magic of Orientation is this: a time where strangers meet with the same fear and excitement. Where faces look the same or strikingly different and you get lost trying to find Building X. Orientation is a time where friend groups are a myth so everyone’s name is important but their stories and passions are even more important. Everyone is important at orientation. This is a time where we ask ourselves silly questions like who will be my friends for life or who will be great to take a picture with in case they become famous. A time when sitting in the dining hall with random people was not frowned upon. This is a time where target trips become the norm and parents cars crowd the streets while pieces of luggage are being moved. It is a time where some international students drag their jet lagged feet across campus to begin their new journey in a foreign land.
Orientation is a time where the extroverted students, the rowdy crowd, the front row people get noticed during mandatory sex-Ed presentations. It is a time where people get excited or bored by long presentations about school policy and global mindsets and so on. Many thoughts go through the young mind such as will I make friends, I miss my family and so on. The first year brain wonders how there can be so many beautiful people in one class year, when classes start or who will come up with the best business idea. Tis a time when everyone gets invited to the first party and everyone goes because they are curious about college parties but mostly about each other. Of course, Orientation would not be complete without the name-tags because regardless of how many times you see the same faces, you still forget Person X or even worse, make the mistake of calling Person Y by Person X’s name.
After the weekend, a spell is cast that destroys all the relationships built. The magic is lost when we begin to know our way around campus. We lose the magic when cliques form and people find their core groups. Every dining table starts having an invisible wall that prevents a non-member of the group from sitting. The magic dies when there is nothing that forces strangers to hang out together. What ends up happening is tragic: people find other people who are just like them and make the mistake of calling high school version 2: college.
