Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

It’s the start of freshman orientation today. I immediately knew from the number of cars parked in front of the McDonald’s beside the visitors’ entrance, and the big banner across the gate that said, “Welcome Freshies.”

Minor peeve: I don’t know why they consider freshmen a politically incorrect term. Changing it to “frosh” and “froshies” annoyed extremely the past few years they’ve used them.

This year they assembled the new students in the lobby of the new administration building, although the reconstructed and renamed Chess/Students’ Plaza would have been big enough to accommodate all of them.
There were also tables set up there where the students would be given their pack snacks. I don’t remember anymore whether we were given food during my orientation, but that was seventeen years ago. I do remember the campus tour, the mass, the cultural arts show and the mad dash in front of the thirty plus student organizations, who tried to outshout each other while thrusting their flyers and souvenirs on all the passing students.

I’m not sure if they do the Council of Student Organizations “introduction” anymore, but I do know that the cultural arts show had become so well presented that they have had to prevent the upperclassmen from watching and crowding in the freshies, especially now that it will be shown in the new building’s thousand-plus seat theater.

According to our former vice chair/new vice dean, today it’s the College of Business and Economics, which has the highest number of freshman sections enrolling (21). These are followed by the College of Engineering and the College of Liberal Arts, which have 17 sections each. The College of Computer Studies, which I thought had the largest piece of the pie, only has 11 sections. The College of Education only has three sections.

This will be going on all throughout this week and next week, when the College of Science will have it’s turn. Next week is also when the old students start their course adjustment. So it’s still possible that my schedule, which has already changed from teaching electricity physics lab to introductory Visual Basic programming (besides the staple astronomy), will change again.