Orientation Week part 1

Day 1

My move in was kinda disappointing. At around 10, I wanted my family to go to Millenium Park for them to see the famous bean thing. But my dad kept resisting going, claiming that we had to go to campus to move in. My move in appointment was at 2. We ended up not going. Then we went to some suburban asian supermarket, where I got the wonderful experience of hearing my parents profess their love for suburbia /s (I hate the suburbs—they're so devoid of life and are so selfish). My mom also soured my mood as she kept stubbornly babying me despite my objections. Move in went pretty smoothly—we got to move in earlier than our appointment.

Then I ate at the dining hall and exited through some weird back door that trapped me inside BJ (another dorm). We then spent some time lounging around where I played scuffed Bananagrams with my sister. After that we walked to a nearby grocery store, where my dad whined about having to walk a little bit (he constantly just wants to be in the car, and I hate car-dependent culture). Then he was racist about the grocery store. Fun times /s.

We eventually said our byes. I poked around my dorm a bit and made some friends that I hung out with for most of the day. We had good vibes. From that sample it seems like the people here are a lot sweatier than back home. We had a conversation about college rankings—something very few people back home would 1) care about and 2) notice big shifts. They also seemed to have a bigger party culture than me, so ig more of a work hard play hard vibe. We briefly went to a screening of Mama Mia, but the audio quality was atrocious, so we left. The dorms were locking out visitors, so we ended up spending a bunch of time just walking around. We met this really cracked person though. He self studied for the GRE in astrophysics just to do research with a professor. Crazy.

Some final remarks I'll make are that my house (smaller community inside dorm) seems really, really dead. I think I've only seen a single other person in my house in the house lounge. Also, my roommate still hasn't moved in.

Day 2

Today I wanted to try hanging around other people. I ate breakfast with a PROMYS friend and went to check in. We got a lot of cool, free stuff (including a copy of the Odyssy). Later I checked out the bookstore a bit, lounged around trying to figure out what to do, and went to lunch. I went to one fairly north, just to try it. I met a literature major there, which is just so rare in a sea of econ majors. They seemed really passionate too—she did literature camps in the US (from China). I played frisbee with some people for a bit and went back to my dorm. Turns out I have work due for one of my classes before class even starts, which is such a bruh moment. Then we had some dumb ceremony/event for like 2 hours. I wish I skipped it. After that I went to the gym to work out, but it was really crowded. Thus I headed to dinner and met up with a friend of a friend and a friend of a friend of a friend (both also a math majors!). We made a quick jaunt over to the math department to be greeted with a locked door. Next was the house meetings, which was pretty boring. It was nice to meet people in my house though. There's this one hilarious person. My roommate also finally arrived. After that, we went to the glow party, which kinda sucked. It was a lot like a festival: there were carnival games, mini golf, an inflatable game with a spinning thing to jump over, etc. The line really sucked though. Someone I met yesterday was in a group heading to a frat, so I joined them. We had a bunch of snafus and walked a ton. The group eventually shrunk a bunch. A few of us finally went to the frat party, and as we had been warned, it was sus. They weren't letting guys in, and this was a dorm known for sa. We went back and got lost.

Overall, I wish I got a contact for some of the people I met today. I met like 4 people that I would've really liked to stay in contact with. I also wish I met more people. It's so hard to make friends when theres so little happening. Plus I'm not that extroverted.

Day 3

Today was a pretty good day. There was a calligraphy with coffee event at 8 am, but I wanted to sleep more. I wish I went though. I had some boring meetings today, and for one of them, I went to the wrong place twice 💀. I also met up with some math majors and explored the math department building. There's a lot of stuff under construction. It's also smaller than I expected. We checked out a few books in the library there (I got a physical copy of an Invitation to Arithmetic Geometry, a book I've been pirating for self study). The first few floors were pretty normal (but we did find a random room with a bunch of books and old putnam stuff edit: I realize now as I'm writing that was prob just a closet 😭). The top few floors were an observatory that we were locked out of and some weird room with random junk. It wasn't even all math: there were diodes and a telescope. There was no lights either. It was kinda creepy.

We also had an aims of education speech, which was pretty trivial (in the sense of not being particularly profound). We had an interesting discussion in our house after though. One person had so many signs of being a conservative it was kinda funny. After, I hung out with some people from my house (one of them has a cool underbed den setup). We then went to the Logan event (more of a rso advettising event). It was fun: I pretty much just attended the circus club thing. I think I got decently better at juggling and learned how to do some aerial stuff (trapeze, ring, rope, etc). We then walked some girls back to their place. I considered going to a frat party, but I just decided to walk back (idk if this is patronizing, but I didn't wanna let two girls walk back by themselves at like midnight). After getting back, I worked on bio. Ngl it was more interesting than i expected. I think this course is exploring a more spicy side of ecology. I also did some crosswords and read lookism.

Day 4

Another good day! I started the day with a peer mentor meeting at 9, which sucked. The meeting was kinda boring. But I met a dual English and math major there, which is so cool. Interestingly, there was also a married guy there (in the sense of not young). I then met up with an old friend and went to the gym. Afterwards, we got lunch with some other math majors, one of whom is taking Honors Analysis too! I had planned to meet another math major, but we just ended up not meeting. I went to my next meeting, which was extremely boring. Then I had my Engage Chicago service project, which is just a volunteering program. I got assigned to this garden in Chicago. I helped pull invasive vines to help beautify the place for a donor meeting. It was pretty heartwarming to hear the impact this garden has on the community. Unfortunately though, we didn't get to spend much time there. Our bus driver seemed have gotten lost on the way there? Bro stopped by another bus to ask that driver if they were going the right way. He took like an hour to drive about 2 miles. bruh. They also had a chicken, and I met someoe on that trip who collects honey jars.

After we got back, I headed to Bartlett (a more northern dining hall when I'm more southern) to try and find some of the other people I met the other days. But while walking across the quad I ran into this huge group of people playing exploding kittens. I joined, and the crazy thing was is that two of the people there were people I had already interacted with before on Discord. I introduced myself, and they recognized me as the math major (because I used my name on the admitted students discord). They introduced themselves using discord usernames, which I just find so funny. It made me realize my own sexism though. One of them was a physics major (known to me because of Discord roles), and I was surprised that they were a girl. Maybe I can excuse myself using the fact that she had he/him roles in the server as well, and that role came first (apparently she just spammed roles, so idk if she actually is he/him too). But still that's kinda bad. After dinner, we went to Off-Off campus, a comedy show. We sat in the Lincoln seats. The show was pretty funny. Maybe this just categorizes all humor, but it seemed like the skits fell into two categories: randomness and setup-punchline. The show also felt more focused on acting, not on comedy. There was one act in particular that was super chaotic, and just had the actors act the same scene over and over in different characters. I was really surprised by how much free license they got. They made dick jokes, smut jokes, etc. There wasn't anything subversive in the satirical tradition, but it still surprised me. Pretty much directly after that was the Reynold's club party, which to me was pretty lame. It didn't seem like there was much to do. Later in the party, I learned that there was an arcade, which made it more fun. Some people and I managed to break the counter of a game through the power of teamwork (think wack-a-mole but with a person controlling each hole—there was that many people there). At the arcade I met the person I was trying to meet earlier for lunch, which is a crazy coincidence. Along the way back, I tried to enter a frat party, but apparently they weren't letting guys in. In the dorms I met some people playing Phase 10, and I joined in. We had an awesome multihour conversation. That night I went to bed at like 4 am. No one won the game.

Edit: ok guys on rereading this, it sounds like I'm so desperate to enter a frat party. I'm just curious. One of my friends that is really pure starting drinking and partying in college, which made me so curious about it.