Mina

This post is a reflection of my first week on campus, which was a week before classes started because I moved in early to take a three day workshop called Honors Primetime. It’s kind of weird because I’m finishing it while classes are going on, but I’m trying to stay in that first-week mentality. Feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think!

1. Living Away From Home
   I am writing this as I am waiting for my first load of laundry to finish. Thankfully, one of my roommates offered to help me out with it, but it wasn’t too hard to figure out over all. It’s kind of weird for me to have to keep track of all this tedious stuff that I’ve taken for granted. Rugs get dusty and hairy when they aren’t vacuumed. The garbage needs to be taken out on a weekly basis, especially if you eat bananas in your room. Going to the bathroom in the middle of the night entails finding your key in the dark, putting on flip flops, and unlocking and locking your door as quietly as possible, although it will still be loud enough to annoy your roommates. I’m glad that I decided to move in early, because I feel like it would be really stressful to figure this all out while classes are starting. Also, I’m really glad that I decided to live in Daum, which is the Honors House, because it’s connected to the Blank Honors Center and the dining hall, so it’s really convenient if you need a quiet place to study or want to get food in the winter and don’t want to have to go outside. Plus, the fifth through eighth floors recently got renovated and all the rooms there look better than any of the rooms I saw on college visits, so, being on the fifth floor, I’m pretty sure that I have one of the best college living situations in America. However, if you’re not a member of the honors program, I think that any dorm close to campus is ideal for freshmen, and there are a lot of other cool LLCs besides the Honors one, so if you come here next year, do some research before picking where you live.
2. People
   During orientation a couple months ago, I remember every upperclassman repeating one thing: “leave your door open!” This almost sounds like metaphorical advice, but they literally meant that we should keep our doors open when we aren’t sleeping, because it’s a great way to meet new people. My roommates like to go to bed early, so my room isn’t the cool room where everyone goes to hang out. However, whenever I’m bored I just go out into the hallway and wander around, and there’s always someone who left their door open and is willing to talk to me. Also, lounges are a great place to check out if you’re bored. Cards Against Humanity gets old really fast, especially if there are fifteen of you cramped in a single room. During the first week I was here my floor threw an Olympic viewing party on our floor’s lounge, and what started as a twenty person event turned into a one hundred person event, so huge that we eventually had to move to the basement lounge. I would definitely suggest throwing a floor/dorm party during the first week, so you can make some friends right away and meet the people who you’ll be running into all year. Also, if you’re a light sleeper, try going to bed a little later, because there will be people on your floor who are moving furniture/watching tv/coming home from a party at 1am, at least during the first week if you choose to move in early. However, there are rules about quiet hours on our floor from 11pm to 7am during the school week, so hopefully it won’t be too hard to get some sleep once that’s in effect.
3. Food
   The freshman fifteen is real. The stereotype is that the extra fifteen pounds that freshmen gain is from drinking alcohol, but I think that the dining hall food alone can do the trick. Think about it. There is ice cream, pizza, and a waffle maker in the dining hall every single day for every single meal. Not to mention all of the free food that is at every event. I swear this school has a cookie fetish or something, because it seems like every open house I go to has cookies. It will probably settle down after a couple weeks, but I’d like to think that all the extra calories have been offset at least a little bit by all of the walking around campus, plus the five flights of stairs I have to take to get to my dorm room. My only advice here is to avoid eye contact with the dessert line. Also, there are two types of meal plans you can get, the black and the gold plan. The gold plan is essentially an unlimited food plan, while the black meal plan gives you nine dining hall meals a week, plus flex meals, which are meals you can buy at the marketplace or IMU (Iowa Memorial Union). I would most definitely recommend the gold plan, because I’ve heard that the flex meals aren’t that great and the black meal plan averages out to less than two meals per day, which is inconvenient if you like eating breakfast. But, over all, the food here is pretty good.
4. On Iowa!
   On Iowa! is Iowa’s version of campus welcome (which is different from summer orientation). Everyone gets split into groups where they attend sessions that cover some of the basics of succeeding in college. The convenient thing is that you’re not overwhelmed with information because of the Success at Iowa course that every freshman takes over the summer/into the first month of school online. The course shows you how to check your degree audit, use the bus system, and do a bunch of other stuff I never would have thought about. So, a lot of the group activities at On Iowa! will be a refresher, but at least it isn’t stressful. Plus, there is always something going on during those first few days, from pizza crawls to Target Takeover to hypnosis shows. Go to these events. You’ll have plenty of time to do laundry or finish your book in the morning, but free gift bags from Target only come once in a lifetime.
5. Kickoff at Kinnick
   Kickoff at Kinnick was definitely one of the best nights I’ve had so far. Almost every single person in the class of 2020 went to Kinnick Stadium, where we learned the fight song, formed a giant “I” while wearing our “class of 2020” t shirts, threw water bottles, and watched some awesome fireworks on the football field. It felt special in a really corny way to be with every member of my graduating class at once. Hawkeye spirit is infectious around here, so whether you came from a high school graduating class of 30 or 730, whether you’re from NYC or Cedar Rapids, whether you were a football player or a member of the marching band, Kickoff at Kinnick will make you think, “I can see this place becoming my new home.” (I apologize for all of that corniness). And if that doesn’t sound like your cup of tea (although it’s supposedly mandatory), there’s a great party afterwards at the IMU, so either way that first Friday night on campus will be a lot of fun.

That’s all I have for now. Next week I’ll cover my first week of classes, which as I’m finishing this post is still going on and is so far looking very promising. As a closing thought I’ll leave you with this: one year ago, I never would have guessed that I was going to Iowa. I saw myself as a person who preferred the small liberal arts college for its personal touch, its way of forging more meaningful networks and encouraging a diverse curriculum. I think the worst thing you can do in your college search is to make assumptions about a school based on numbers. A large student body doesn’t mean a lack of personal connection. If anything, it means a greater chance of finding it. A small city doesn’t mean there’s nothing to do. It just means that life is more focused around student activities than the downtown. So, try to keep an open mind over the next year. I’ve only found the University of Iowa to get better and better with every new discovery, and I hope that, through this blog, you will too.

-Mina

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 25th, 2016 at 7:49 am 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.