By Michael Kennedy
Of my top five worst experiences of my freshmen year, freshmen orientation and General Engineering Studies (my college-specific orientation class) occupy two of those places.
Going into orientation, I couldn’t figure out why, I had been told, my employer was legally obligated to let me off work for two days. And coming out of orientation, I still couldn’t come up with an answer.
There are a few practical things U of L can do to fix freshmen orientation.
1. Have orientation on the weekend. Some people work 40-hour-a-week jobs over the summer to pay for tuition (which is more than nine percent higher this year), and they have a difficult time getting permission from their employer to take time off.
By having it on the weekend -a Saturday/Sunday, or even Friday night/Saturday session would greatly improve the inconvenience a number of incoming students face.
2. Make orientation shorter. My roommate never signed up for a two-day orientation slot, and as a result, was placed in a three-hour transfer student orientation.
He seems to have adapted well. What was it I learned that he didn’t? I would be inclined to believe that there was only three hours of useful information in my two-day session. Three hours, on a Saturday, would be perfect for freshmen orientation.
3. If it must be two days, don’t make the incoming students stay in Miller Hall.
Talk about a bad first impression of the campus. I never thought about living on campus, but whatever shard of consideration there was for the idea left in my mind quickly fled after spending a night in that building.
Why did I have to spend the night in a non-air conditioned dorm room on a cot when my own bed was fifteen minutes away?
Staying in Miller should be an option available to incoming students, if they would like to get a feel for living on campus, however, it should not be forced upon commuter students.
4. Don’t make class registration dependent on the orientation session a student is in. Just because an incoming student is unorganized and forgets that he has to sign up and can’t get into an orientation session before 80 percent of his peers doesn’t mean that he should also lose preference for class scheduling as well.
The class scheduling order should be based on the rotating system of last names, as is implemented in every other instance. It is the fairest system we have.
Someone could get a late orientation block, register last in the spring, and then have a last name that registers last in the fall as well. This travesty could be averted by simply eliminating scheduling during orientation.
As far as I can surmise, there are three purposes for freshmen orientation: to let incoming students meet their advisor, to garner sympathy for Miller residents, and to teach them the C-A-R-D-S cheer-and that could even be learned at the first home football game.
Michael Kennedy is a sophomore majoring in computer engineering and computer science. E-mail him at opinion@louisvillecardinal.com.
