Kat

My first experience at the University of Iowa was move-in day. I moved in on Thursday the 18th and I was honestly pretty nervous. I didn’t know what to expect, where to go, or how I would feel about it. Despite all my worrying, it wasn’t as bad as I thought and I quickly fell in love with college life. As soon as I moved in and got settled, I sat down and wrote a list of the things that I learned during my short move in time.

1. College doesn’t feel like college right away- All summer I imagined college a certain way. I thought that I would step on campus and my life would automatically transform into something different. I thought that the feeling would eventually hit me after my first night but it never really did. I still feel like this is temporary and I will be going home soon. I know I will get more used to college life, but for right now everything is just a little strange.
2. RA’s can be awesome- RA’s can basically be instant friends that know everything about campus and college life. Mine offered to take our floor to places and go on campus tours, which made me feel a lot more comfortable about being on campus. RA’s are there to enforce rules but they can also be great resources.
3. It is okay if you don’t have 100 friends right away- I learned that when you get to college, everyone is extremely friendly.  A lot of people start to form groups or become isolated by only talking to their roommates. This works for some people, but just remember that if you don’t find your group of people right away it is okay.
4. You will introduce yourself so many times and it is kind of crazy– After about ten minutes of meeting new people I  had a script of what I would say to people since everyone asked the same questions. I would spout out my name, hometown, major, residence hall, and floor about every three minutes. It got kind of repetitive but it was great meeting a ton of new people and seeing what we had in common.
5. Your dorm room looks bigger in pictures- When planning my dorm room I knew I wouldn’t have much space, but when I opened the door to my room I realized that I had half the space that I thought I would have. Needless to say, I brought way too much stuff.
6. No one else knows what they are doing- Pretty much everyone you see on campus is either lost or confused. Even if they look like they are already college pros, just know that they are probably faking it until they make it. So if you are lost just trying to get to the IMU, keep in mind that you are definitely not alone.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 21st, 2016 at 2:48 pm and is filed under General, . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.