What’s your name? Your major? Where are you from? What dorm are you living in?
These questions will be the soundtrack to new students’ first few weeks at UCLA. While it can be tedious, it’s necessary to learn about your peers and cycle through dozens of new students to find the friends who will make your college experience fantastic.
I’m an introvert, and I was anxiously awaiting those days to be over. Introducing myself over and over again, going out with people I hardly knew and sitting next to someone I had never met in class left a pit in my stomach.
But the experience was transformative, and without those awkward introductions, I never would have grown close to the many amazing Bruins I call friends today. Closing out my sophomore year, I was confident in my place at UCLA and with the friends who made my first two years so wonderful.
I was hardly ready to start again.
Studying abroad has made me realize that the freshman fall experience of meeting new people and working to build strong friendships is a recurring theme in many of our lives. Instead of wanting to get it over with, we should learn to appreciate the growth that these moments bring.
I had been looking forward to studying in Rome for months, especially as an avid lover of art, history and pasta. That’s all I had been thinking about: the thrill of living in a new city. I didn’t focus on the fact that I knew no one in my program.
I had buried the soundtrack of introductions deep in my memory, but it was utterly familiar when it resurfaced.
What’s your name? Your major? What school are you from? What apartment are you living in?
Different, but the same.
I was a freshman again. I was anxious about how I was being perceived and trying desperately to make a respectable first impression. I thought I had escaped the freshman fall – yet it was coming back, quickly, to haunt me.
The introvert in me was struggling.
But my first few weeks in Rome have made it clear that freshman fall is not a one-time thing. It’s a recurring cycle that will repeat itself at every new endeavor.
Summer internships, first jobs and relationships. New roommates, new cities and studying abroad. We start over again and again in life as we experience more and more.
After orientation and my freshman fall, I felt like I had jumped over that hurdle. I made my college friends and was set for life thereafter.
But I failed to recognize the friends who would come in later years. I failed to recognize that the mindset of being “set for life” can hinder us from experiencing new things. I urge Bruins to embrace the freshman fall mindset and learn to love our silly little introductions, that ubiquitous soundtrack. They can lead to relationships that last a lifetime.
As I continue to study in Rome – which has been absolutely magical – I am working to revel in the process of starting from scratch and getting to know new people. It will be so valuable to return to UCLA with friends who study at universities spanning the West Coast.
More than that, I now understand that this is not the last time I will start over. While I hope my community at UCLA will stay in my life for a long time, I cannot wait to see who else the world will bring my way. Freshman fall lasts far beyond your first quarter at UCLA – it’s an ongoing part of life.
So, to freshmen: know that your freshman fall should be memorable, but it will not be singular. Take the time to learn about your campus and meet your friends. And learn to love such a feeling, because it is simply part of life.
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