It sounds like you want our first day on the premises, not our first day of classes, correct? For me, that’d be the first day of band camp, a week or two before the actual start of the semester, and it landed me with a ready-made set of brand-new acquaintances, who were at least inclined to be friendly. It helped a lot.
That was the first class I dropped! We grew up in a small rural area, and swimming meant going to a lake if one was close-by; there were no pools in the area at that time. And if you had ever taken swimming lessons, that meant you were a town kid. I wasn’t, so I didn’t learn how to swim until I became a scout leader as an adult.
When I registering for classes, the old, grizzled advisor said that I should take a one-credit physical education class (two credits were required to graduate), and asked me if I knew how to swim. I said no, so he signed me up for a swim class in the sports complex across the campus at 8:00 in the morning.
My sister, who is two years older than me and was going to the same university, wanted to see my schedule before classes started. She freaked out when she saw Swimming at 8:00 AM. First of all, she said that was a class that people took if they already knew how to swim, just for an easy A; I would struggle as a non-swimmer. Second, it was at freaking 8:00 AM, and third, she asked me if I really wanted to walk across campus after that class, wet and cold, when temperatures would be below freezing in the winter. So my first class was actually my first (and only) dropped class.
For my two credits of physical education, several years later I took social dance and racquet sports/volleyball. Yep, easy A.
What years did you go to college? I attended '69 through '73, and we didn’t have any phys ed requirements.
I’ve described my first day on the premises, but feel free to broaden it if you want : first class(es), first few days…
I think they were pretty common. I did it at MIT, my one daughter had to take a swimming test at Chicago, but the other did not have one at Maryland five years later.
My mother-in-law went to a girl’s college in the late '30s, and failed her test over and over. They finally stuck a pole in the back of her bathing suit and dragged her along so she could graduate.
In 1954, Penn required a swimming test and 8 total PE credits. I certainly could swim, but avoided the whole PE thing be being only a part-time student for the first three years and then ignoring the PE for the last year and a half and they somehow didn’t notice.
I find it odd that a swimming test would be required for a university education. Certainly, it was not required when I went to U of Toronto; and no PE was required either.
My first day at college (1983) was moving into the dorms, on a Sunday, which was “move-in day.” My parents and sister drove me, and my stuff, down to UW-Madison, and helped me unpack; they then left, and by that point, it was early afternoon.
Over the course of the rest of the afternoon, I met my “housefellow” (RA/resident assistant at any other university), met my roommate when he showed up a few hours later, and a few other guys on my floor. The dorm cafeteria wasn’t open yet, so I went to the student union for dinner.
The housefellow held a getting-to-know-you meeting for everyone, in the house den, that evening. So, I was meeting people right away, but my enduring memory of that day and evening was feeling very lonely and uncertain. It didn’t help that I, fundamentally, then had nothing to do for three days, other than to try to plan my class schedule, as class registration day for freshmen wasn’t until Thursday, and classes didn’t start until the following Monday.
Yeah, me, too. I understand that the Cornell requirement was due to the lake (Ithaca?) very near campus where students would occasionally drown. They wanted their students prepared to survive. But an urban university? I don’t see the point.
It certainly feels like a holdover from the old days, when college students, especially at liberal-arts institutions, were expected to be well-rounded, and were in college in order to receive a diverse education.
This article cites that, as of last year, 32% of US colleges require taking a physical education class in order to graduate, and that that number is down 7 percentage points from 2010. It also indicates that a PE requirement was close to universal at US colleges in the 1920s and 1930s.
This was in the late 1970s, at a state-run land-grant university. Was requiring PE a holdover from the days when everyone (male) could possibly end up in the military?
My daughter was in a college program in the 2000s that required a PE credit, but it was possible to do it online (bowling, walking, general heath habits), instead of being in a gymnasium or with a coach/teacher. It was much easier, but she didn’t appreciate having to do it.
Here’s what I found at Inside Higher Education from 2023:
Which cites the same study that my post just before yours did. 
It was 1987. I wanted to leave home so badly that I remember being packed for days before leaving for school. I was the first person by at least a half hour to arrive at the dormitory of my fine arts college. I remember the RA walking up to the door and tapping on his watch to indicate that he was not going to open the door until it was 9 am, so we waited. My dorm room was a suite of two 2-person bedrooms with a shared kitchen and bathroom.
When my first suite mate arrived she instinctively went into the opposite bedroom, and I very uncharacteristically went over and asked if she would like to share my room. Thank god I did, because the other two girls were both unusually ill-suited for city college life (both from very small towns states away—I think one had never seen a stoplight before. I don’t think either one made it the full year.) My suite mate and I had a very contentious relationship with those girls—we were typical music loving, collar flipping, hairspray styling girls and they…were not.
I remember walking with my family to the downtown Woolworths to purchase some small item (ice tray for the refrigerator?) and me being nearly killed by a passing delivery truck with wide extended side mirrors— I just remember that mirror whooshing by my face as I stood at the curb.
My mother did a very performative wall-clutching tearful goodbye which I always thought was odd because we did not get along at all (understatement), and I’m sure she was as excited to be rid of me as I was to be rid of.
My suite mate cried herself to sleep that night and many nights after which was in stark contrast to my absolute joy being on my own—I never felt homesick for one moment. That probably wasn’t much help to her—she would’ve had an easier time with someone with whom she could commiserate.
I have one photo of myself in my dorm room from that year. My bed/study area was decorated with draped fish net, a candlestick in a cobalt Tŷ Nant water bottle, a large poster print of a beloved Richard Estes painting, posters of Prince, and a photo of my fashion model brother. I was smiling and looked utterly free.
That reminds me of neighbors of my parents when they retired to Sun City AZ. This couple had had a farm in North Dakota, and they did not have much city experience at all. Not that Sun City was a city in any real sense of the word. One of my high school teachers called the Sun Citys “geriatric playpens” – his parents had retired to the CA one. But this ND couple could not adjust to “all the traffic” in Sun City. They didn’t go into Phoenix at all.
Classes didn’t start for a few days so it was a lot of signing up for classes, buying books, orientation, and events set up for the incoming freshmen.
The main thing I remember about the first days of college was how the freshmen would wander the fraternity hill in packs. Usually wearing the same stupid “Co-ed naked…” or cartoon characters getting drunk T-shirts one of the fraternities sold them a few hours ago as part of a fundraiser.
I also thought it odd that students were automatically signed up to receive J.Crew catalogues every month. Probably one of the reason half the campus was always wearing barn jackets, fleece jackets, and flannel shirts.
I still lived at home so it was just walking to school and signing up for things then going home. I wasn’t sure of what classes to take, and talked to a student volunteer who suggested a class on exploring your interests.
Prelude to the first day:
I was assigned an “advisor”. You waited in line in a hallway, at the end was a prof at a table. You got a few minutes to set up a class schedule and then “Next.” Only time I ever talked to this person. They did find out I was interesting in programming, had me pick a Fortran II programming class despite it being 300-level, but I met the pre-reqs.
While in line waiting to get my student ID, the girl in front of me started chatting. Turned out we were both born in the same tiny hospital in a small, remote town in another part of the state. She was related to one of my friends in first grade. I found university life had a lot of that sort of encounters.
To actually sign into classes was in person. The gym was taken over for a couple days. You went around to each department’s tables at your scheduled slot (frosh last, of course), asked if the class was still open, filled out a carbon paper form thing, you got a copy, the prof got a copy, the admin got a copy, etc. (It was also my first experience being around college folk dressed like college folk at a place with a lot of hippie types. Quite eye opening.)
Then actual first day. For the programming class this young guy came in. He said his name, explained he was a TA, explained what that was, etc. I instantly thought “I’m going to do that.” 3 years later, I came into class, gave me name, explained I was a TA, etc.
As a TA I also ended up helping at the dept. table at registration. One student I knew from tutoring came by and wanted to know what level stat class she should take. I told her the 300 level one, it was designed for people like her. It worked out well. She’s currently down the hall watching TV.
That little bit of advice I got from someone I can’t really remember plus that great TA led to my marriage, two kids, one grandkid and another one due in a little over a week.
Congratulations! I’ve found grandparenting to be the best gig ever, even more than TAing.
I visited campus over the summer for freshman orientation and then there was a continuation of that in the days before classes started, with Freshman Olympics, in which various dorms competed with each other. Once classes started, the one weirdness that sticks out in my mind was my Physics I recitation class. (Physics and chemistry classes were taken by almost all freshmen, so there were 500-person lecture sessions along with smaller recitation classes of perhaps twenty or thirty students in a classroom setting with a professor, for closer attention.) I was sitting in the very first recitation class, of course knowing no one, and yet everyone else there seemed to know each other. I was totally thrown by this and wondering if I missed a bunch of classes but said nothing. Eventually I learned that just about everyone else was in a special enrichment program for under-represented minority students from NYC and so they’d all been on campus together over the summer.
Bumping this since I missed this one a few months ago.
Back in the early 80s at my university, freshmen showed up a few days early, presumably to get accustomed to the campus before classes started and everyone showed up. My folks drove me to the campus, and I found my room. My first reaction was to look for the door to the rest of it (there was no rest of it!). I met my roommate (a great guy - I see him at least once a year even now), and did a bunch of orientation things: met the other thirty folks on my hall, went to the freshman dinner, etc. I know I took a placement test to see what level of German course I should go into (German III, as it turned out). My roommate and I found the auditorium where there was a professor-led discussion of the book that we were all supposed to read over the summer, and found our way back to the dorm, too. Sometime that weekend my hallmates and I went to a nearby farm owned by an alumni for a picnic.