On Campus Difficulties

The first few days on campus were difficult for a few reasons. I don’t know anyone on campus (or I didn’t at that point, luckily I do now!!) and don’t have any real advisors that know me and my work. I feel like I’ve been a bit underestimated by the only professor I’ve had class with so far – that’s okay though because at least I’ll surprise him at some point, hopefully. So much of me wanted to look around and see Dr. Creed or Dr. Curtis or Dr. Ford or Helen or someone that I knew who could give me some counsel on what courses would be best and reaffirm my confidence that I actually can handle graduate level work. I know that this is all part of the maturing process and I now feel relieved that I can go into an otherwise unknown and difficult situation and make decisions and be successful (hopefully on the second part). So one of the biggest obstacles was not having an advisor who knows me and not knowing any of the faculty, next was all of the cultural and institutional differences between my education experience and the new one in which I will be taking part. Unlike any registration I’ve ever been a part of, the registration process is completely done by paper – great for a paper trail, but quite unnerving considering the possibility of human error and the finality this process creates.
Finally, I feel like every time I open my mouth people automatically have an opinion of me because I’m American. I recognize that this may be completely in my head, but I know that it has been true at least a couple of times. That’s okay, hopefully I will surprise a few people and change some minds about Americans.
All of these new experiences paired with some anxiety and a bit of frustration made my first few days on campus exciting as well as slightly overwhelming. I prefer the term sufficiently whelmed – not overwhelmed to the point of a panic attack, but not bored by any stretch.