Back to campus

Back to campus

Thursday was Move In Day for freshmen at St. Norbert College in De Pere. This is the when nervous and excited 17 and 18 year olds arrive on college campuses around the country with even more nervous and exited moms and dads in tow to help move the boxes of stuffed animals, cookware, clothes, beds in bags and school supplies.

I remember that day well even though it was (OMG) eighteen years ago. We arrived with my U-Haul of stuff that I had collected throughout the summer of 1995 to Van Antwerp Hall at NMU.  My “house” was an all-girls floor painted with cartoon characters in the hallway and stark white concrete block walls in my room. My mom and dad helped me make my bed with ivy patterned sheets and bedspread, put up my old theater posters from high school, then set up my microwave, electronic typewriter and hip clock radio.

 I was an only child 700 miles away from home. It was a whole new (lonely) world for me. For four years my boy craziness had been limited due to attendance at an all-girls high school and here, I had boys, no scratch that, men, walking down the hallways without shirts. It was certainly an adjustment.

I did have a roommate who I met a few days later but never really meshed with. It could be that she never left the room after the first week of classes, or the fact that she always blasted Violent Femmes in the darkened room or the illegal hedgehog that she stored in our closet.  Eventually, I was able to embrace all that Northern had to offer. I started by joining hall government and choral society. I got a job at the newspaper and then in housing, dated a few guys, excelled at my studies and became a leader on campus, along the way forming my circle of friends and set of values that I have today.

I see the fresh-faced students of the Class of 2017 and their parents and have to say I’m a little envious. My college years were some of the best years of my life which couldn't be replicated. These freshmen have all of the tears, and joys, and growth experiences ahead of them. They have all of the same feelings of anxiety and change that I did but they never experienced a world without instantaneous access to information and communication (email and the Internet was a brand new phenomenon my freshman year of college). They arrive with laptops, tablets, SMART phones, Katy Perry posters, and chevron printed bed spreads. On the flip side, they will leave college four years (or more) from now with ever increasing student loan debt, more of a reliance on credit cards than even my generation had, and a need to find a job in a struggling economy.

A tip to the freshmen of the Fall of 2013: learn how to budget, save, and spend wisely. Take full advantage of the meal dollars in your dining plan. Limit your use of credit cards to create a collection of Coach purses or just to obtain airline miles. (Yup, I made both of those mistakes!) Be wise about the price of communicating with friends and family at home by taking advantage of email, unlimited cell phone coverage, and Skype. (My freshmen year, my long distance bill averaged $100 a month and I spent at least $10 a month on stamps for real letters. )  You will find that you don’t have to dine on ramen noodles, grilled cheese sandwiches and Spaghettio’s for four years. With minimal effort, you can use technology, your creativity and, of course, blogs like this one, to eat steak and of course, pizza, on a ramen noodle budget.