Freshman year brings excitement, uncertainty

The weather stations sure do love August, the only month that ensures a delicious… The weather stations sure do love August, the only month that ensures a delicious combination of hurricanes, erratic wind patterns and hair-sizzling humidity. Pittsburgh’s long-standing and favorite brand of odd weather comes in the form of a recent bout of unpredictable, yet violent storms.

Despite the fact that this weather is nothing new to Pittsburgh residents, many of whom have suffered years of abuse from short-lived thunderstorms scattered a dozen times throughout the day, it does represent something more meaningful than a simple ratings boost for Al Roker and company. In fact, it is a momentous forecast for thousands of freshman students: a looming force of uncertainty that will tear away at the safety and security of home.

Yes, it is an exciting thought to be leaving home for college. By day, I will fill my brain with the knowledge of the world. By night, I can eagerly explore the exciting adventures of the Pitt campus or perhaps even stay in and listen to the soft musical patterings of the helicopter pad on the top of my dorm room. The basic schedule of academic life has been etched into the minds of incoming freshmen for years by siblings, parents, friends or occasionally a great cinematic classic like “Animal House” or “Legally Blonde.”

However, it is the in-betweens, the ins and outs of surviving on one’s own, that worry me. For example, how am I, an outrageously geographically impaired child, ever going to master the streets of Oakland? My biggest fear is that while walking down campus streets, no doubt thinking I have everything under control, I will become woefully off-route, walk into a Taco Bell with textbook in hand and cheerfully report to the cashier, “Hi, Professor! I’m here!” Never mind that the Taco Bell looks nothing like a classroom or that professors probably – hopefully – wouldn’t wear the customary purple-and-green Taco Bell uniform. I would still probably ask some idiotic question about where to sit or what purpose do those straws have in our classroom discussion, in which case she almost certainly will give me a dirty look and then secretly spit into my nachos for the rest of my college career.

The busing system, while a convenient luxury that should help with my inability to travel anywhere that is more than 100 yards away from me, has only played up my anxiety. My recent first encounters with said system have been nothing short of disastrous. Not only do I have to ask each bus driver if I am getting on the right bus, I usually feel compelled to then ask again before I get off. It should be noted that – for obvious reasons – I wasn’t their favorite passenger. I also have an irrational need to pull the yellow stop cord multiple times, for fear that it somehow didn’t work the first time. The bus drivers weren’t very happy about that either. I figure that by the end of my first month, most of the Pittsburgh bus drivers would sooner run me over than let me on to their bus again.

Then there are the little issues of waking up in the morning, figuring out my meal plan, which right now seems to have as many rules and exceptions as the federal tax code, and of course, getting all my work done. Despite my many attempts to understand these rather daunting obstacles, the actual process of how to go about doing this has been as smooth and easy as trying to find a pebble at the bottom of an ocean filled with sharks and walruses or other such debilitating aquatic life.

I am sure it is normal to be paranoid about little things like this. It is an awful lot to remember for a girl who let her parents clean her room for 18 years, or for anyone else. I just have to assume that no one can possibly be prepared for this kind of transition. As time passes, the small worries and anxieties that bother us now will never even cross our mind.

I guess in the end it’s kind of like a batch of “Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Jelly Beans”; we have to experience some bad with the good before we can figure out what works for us.

E-mail Molly some freshmen advice at mog4@pitt.edu.