Compos Mentis

College

Because Paul started me on this whole blogger thing (good idea Paul's roomate!) I dedicate my first post to him and all the interesting things he's found out about the college experience. Now, I think BYU has some stranger stuff going on than Gonzaga does, but in case I'm wrong, I wanted to share my perception of the College Orientation.
It begins by moving all possesions you care about in life into a miniscule room that you share with a complete stranger. For most people this is fairly difficult; I, with my single suitcase and two small bags was astounded to see people come with large tv's, full sized computers, refrigerators, popcorn makers, just absolutely crazy things. You are allowed here to 'loft' your bed, that is, stick it up on concrete blocks in order to fit more things under them. I walk down the hall and I find people who have their bed higher than they can reach, and I have no idea how they can get up there to sleep. On the other hand, these are the ones whom I have not yet seen go to class, so I supposed if I stayed in my dorm room 24 hours a day, I would want all that crap too.
One other strange thing about Orientation is the Freshman Welcome Night. I know Paul has already spoken of this, but I have my own thoughts on the matter. I believe it's a very well planned psychological event. The University realizes that it has a thousand or so new students who are pretty much being completely cut off from everything they know. The response (of the students) to such a stressful period, one where they are adapting to a completely new enviroment, is one of contempt and mutual bonding against this new and strange entity. 90% of the freshmen I talked to were verbally abusing the school for its lousy Orientation. Now, this slow movement towards unity in the new student body is great, but classes start in two days and the University needs to turn its students into sheep before then. So they put on some loud music and everyone spends a few hours bumping into each other. It acts like a dionysiac orgaic ritual. Everyone gets to expel all their pent-up feelings together with some loud music, and the bonding is cemented. The only thing the University has left to do is to turn the students contempt away from itself. This is a much slower process, but an interesting one because it generally leaves the students saying how much they hate the system, but acting like they are wholly supportive of it. I found Seniors in the honors program ranting on about the inadequacies of the school for a quarter hour, then later going and saying how they had never missed a basketball game.
They've become more sheep now than man.

posted by Emmett @ 09:23