This might be the most Australian thing I’ve heard in years.
I remember disliking my freshman roommate on sight, for what were (in retrospect) really shallow reasons. We wouldn’t have been BFFs under any circumstances, but I was a judgmental little snot to her and she was (also in retrospect) the sort of insecure, academically at-risk student who tends to self-sabotage if they feel like they don’t belong there, which was most definitely the message I was sending. She ended up drinking and partying way too much, dropping out, and starting over at a community college.
I also have really vivid memories of meeting a guy at a freshman mixer who was even more socially awkward than I was, and we had a long conversation about science fiction, and I wasn’t even attracted to him but I remember still feeling kinda miffed that it didn’t turn into anything. And, meanwhile, having an epically disastrous crush on a guy who had also gone to my high school, and really being very stalkery and obsessive about it.
Yeah. I don’t miss my eighteen-year-old self much. On the other hand, I still remember the epic exhilaration of realizing I could take an entire course just on Shakespeare.
By the time I took my first courses, I had already been working as a lab assistant at Penn for a few weeks. The first course would have been in summer school, probably English, but I have no memory of it. My family lived about two miles west of the campus and I just took a trolley to get there. So I have no particular memory.
I was very nervous on my first day at university. You see, I had been sent to sleep-away camp on many summers, and I always hated it. I never got along well with the other campers. So I was worried that my experience in the college dorm would be unpleasant. But I met my roommate, who told a geeky joke, and I thought , “These are my people, finally!”
I guess I had 2 first days at 2 different institutions.
First one was just a few miles from home, so no dorm. I think it was pretty much like high school except it was a women’s college. I dropped out after a year.
Second one was 3 years later in a different state. I arrived in plenty of time to get set up in my apartment, then I went to classes, but I don’t remember anything specific about it.
Then again, it was 1972 and 1976 - I’ve had plenty of time to forget.
- Not my first but - you’ll see.
When I was a junior I arrived on campus earlier than necessary to volunteer to help the new freshman on their first day. Sometime during the day I got harangued by one of them because her trunk was missing. My post had nothing to do with peoples’ personal belongings and I didn’t even know who to ask about it. She went off still angry and I was annoyed that I got put in the middle.
Reader, I married her. And we’re still together.
I went to a very large, urban, primarily commuter school. Barely noticed Div III athletics, absolutely minimal fraternity/sorority presence, average student age ~25. At the time something like 10-15% of students lived in housing on campus and I was not among them. My commute was very long (1.5 hours one way on a good day on public transit with two to three transfers) and as I recall I spent the first day running around and standing in assorted lines doing assorted administrative tasks like paying my tuition in person, getting an exemption from the entry-level math test by showing my SAT score receipt and navigating the insane opening day crush to buy textbooks at the campus book store and sit through a couple of introductory lectures. Then back home again only this time it was late evening so past regular business commute times. I had to wait an hour for one bus, so more like 2+ hours home (bus + streetcar, some days it was bus>subway>streetcar, depending on my mood and commuter timing).
There was absolutely nothing magical about it 
. It was more like going to a confusing new job. Even lunch was tedious because of the massive opening day crush in the cramped student union. I did enjoy the class time portions at least.
I started at UCLA during my senior year in high school. Since I’d be considered a continuing student if I stayed (and I’d remain in the Honors department), I continued with UCLA. But I had to pay for everything myself, so I couldn’t afford to live away from home, and it was only about ten miles away in any case.
I’d been on campus for the first time when I was five. My aunt (who with my uncle were UCLA graduates) took my older sister and me to see a play (Heidi) in Royce Hall. I decided then that there’s where I wanted to go. And it worked out! I’d been on campus a bunch of times in between Heidi and attending myself, so I was familiar with campus and Westwood Village. Obviously, my parents never “took me” to campus. I’m not sure if either of them were even ever there.
My “first” day, then, was pretty anticlimactic and forgettable. And I have forgotten it.
Same here. I went to a university that was maybe a 20 minute subway ride away, so living on campus was unnecessary.
In my case, registration had already occurred, fees had been paid, and classes had been chosen. So really, it wasn’t much different than a day of high school.
I have zero memory of my first day at my first university. Nothing. Nada. What I do remember is being unhappy that first year. I was younger than most of the freshmen and the shock of the transition from high school at a young age was tough. The fact that it was a large prestigious university ironically made things worse because they seemed to prioritize their research and graduate programs at the expense of the undergraduate experience.
That wasn’t the only reason that I switched universities after the first year, but it was a factor. I also thought it was time to move out on my own, and chose a university where my much older brother had just been hired as a prof. I was never in any of his classes so no conflict of interest, but I felt that he could help me navigate the challenges of university life and independent life in general, and he did.
So I had another “first day” that year, at a different school. One hazy memory I do have was going around the campus doing whatever it is we were doing on that first day, and just being aware of the beauty of the campus that perfectly matched the warm September day. The grounds were vast with lots of trees and green space and a river running though it, and at that time virtually all the buildings were in the style of what could be called neo-classical English Gothic, almost castle-like with their ivy-covered stone walls, heavy oak doors, and heavy casement windows. It was impressively idyllic and was all a harbinger of good things to come. I had a very pleasant time there.
Ha! That was one of the few good parts of that miserable first year I described, before I switched schools. I was in a science major but of course had to take some humanities courses, which I didn’t mind because I’m one of those science-y types who also loves language and the arts. The prof we happened to get in this Shakespeare course was a renowned Shakespeare scholar with great enthusiasm for the subject matter. That memorable course instilled in me a lifelong love of Shakespeare. I still have the textbook from that course, a heavily annotated collection of his complete works, probably the biggest and heaviest college text I’ve ever had!
It was busy, a bunch of frosh week orientation shit that was useful for informational purposes but which I found a little immature.
I don’t have any memories either, and it was only 27 years ago, and I did live in a dorm. I completely do not remember moving in.
Remembering the first year I know I was absolutely terrified and my social anxiety was through the roof, so perhaps my brain has completely erased the whole first week.
I DO remember one thing about the night before our first classes. I was sitting on the floor of my very large dorm room, watching coverage of the death of Princess Diana. A woman burst into the room and told me she was my roommate. She gave me a big long yarn about being kidnapped and taken to Mexico by a guy who was or wasn’t her boyfriend. She never even sat down. She said she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to start classes. She’d be back with her stuff.
She never did come back, I never did get a roommate, and I had a huge room all to myself for an entire year. I moved home and became a commuter the next year.
Not only the first day, but the first week was highly memorable. I wrote up my four undergraduate years into a 400 page book (which I’ve never tried to get published; nor do I intend to).
Short form, first day – Flew in to town, got life to campus. Got photo for ID taken. Handed sheaves of papers. Assigned temporary dorm room. Toured the campus, and the dorms and frats in particular. Found out where to take my swimming test (required) and my advance-placement tests to get out of first-term calculus. Found out where to eat and tried Dining Service food. Put in my request for preferred dorm.
Sneak preview of next day – Not only didn’t get into my first, second, or third choice dorm, I didn’t get into any. Living in temp dorm room on borrowed time.
I attended a small, private, Christian, liberal-arts college about 20 miles from home. The first day, Mom made sure I had sheets and blankets and clean clothes and sent me on my way to the dorm. I walked into my dorm room and met, for the first time, my assigned roommate. First impression was that we were not at all alike and didn’t like each other very much. He moved out about a month later and left me without a roommate (yay!) for the rest of the year.
If we can extend the thread to include the first few weeks on campus, and roommate stories, here’s mine:
First day on campus, 1973–nothing memorable. I moved a few boxes and suitcase into my dorm room, etc,
Then my assigned roommate walked in, moved in his boxes and suitcases, etc. We chatted politely, but I realized this wouldn’t become a close friendship. The guy was a sports fanatic, and I knew (and still know) zero about sports
But my roommate–he had his favorite team, and everything he owned showed it. The team logo was on his clothes, on his luggage, on his shoes, etc. He put up posters of his team on the wall, he had some kind of entry pass to the team’s stadium. And he talked sports, and beer, and sports, and beer, and sports.
I was a bit put off. Because I don’t like beer, or sports. And I wanted to talk about my plans to study Shakespeare and Aristotle.
But soon, everybody else in the dorm learned his name…and wow…did we get a lot of guys dropping by our room to say hello, to welcome the new freshman. Somehow, they always walked right past me and started talking to him about sports. I didn’t know why. But what did I care?–I don’t like sports anyway.
Turns out my roommate had a reason for loving his team. His father was a BIG name for that team. Big enough to get regular mentions in Sports Illustrated magazine, and his picture on the cover.
I lived in the same room as this guy for 3 weeks before I learned who he was…despite 150 other guys in my dorm all knowing on the first day or two, as word spread quickly.
After a month or so, my roommate moved out, and joined a fraternity, So that was the end of my utterly oblivious brush with fame.
(But I had a typewriter, and he didn’t, so those first weeks I helped him out and typed a couple one-page papers he wrote. And, boy, it was obvious that he was never going to study Shakespeare and Aristotle. 
Cornell???
If so, did you ever read Fool on the Hill? It was Matt Ruff’s first book based on Cornell. It had fantasy elements, so I was surprised to learn after reading it that the architecture department’s dragon building was an actual real life thing! It was cool to look up early 20th C. dragon parades.
Apparently, Ruff was famous on campus for lugging his giant MS. around with him all the time. It was about 1,200 pages originally, but much pared down when ultimately published. I liked it a lot, but, then, I’m a Matt Ruff fan.
My school had a required swimming test as well.
It was September 1986 at the University of Cincinnati (Ohio, USA). The only thing I remember was the infestation of cicadas. They were everywhere, and would fly into students’ hair.
MIT.
So I haven’t read Fool on the Hill
I understand that Harvard has a requirement, too.
As does Columbia.