Jump Start: UBC First Year Orientation

September 01, 2019

Jump Start: UBC First Year Orientation

And I'm back! Haven't broken the streak yet...

It's official. I have now survived one week away from home (again), and dare I even say I enjoyed it? It was an interesting week, full of more activities than I can count, but overall a very positive experience. This week was Jump Start, an orientation for first year students at UBC. It was a chance for us to meet people and get acquainted with campus before literally 50,000 other people show up. I appreciated being kept busy to avoid missing home too much, and really appreciated the ability to get settled in before classes start on Wednesday.

Last Sunday was the start of the festivities, with some programming for both the students and their parents. After spending the night in my new room, I met up with my parents for breakfast before starting my morning with a presentation for international students. It was at that presentation that I got my true claim to fame: winning a game of Kahoot against over 400 people. I can now say that I've made it. After getting that adrenaline pumping, I went to get lunch with Amy, my bathroommate, before going to a resource fair and then a little tour of campus with some of the people with whom I'd be spending most of the week. While my parents attended some programming on campus, I met my Learning Community (LC), a group of 25-ish other kids in Science. After that, I met back up with my family to let them know that when we entered Canada, I had not been given the physical study permit I needed. We then had to scramble down to the airport to get a rental car so we could drive back to the US border to get it before they all left in the morning, but we dropped in to talk to customs at the airport just in case they could give me the paper, and after working with a very nice officer for a little bit, I was able to get what I needed right there. While it saved some time, the overall evening was a little more hectic than I had bargained for, and not necessarily how I had imagined spending the last few hours with my family. After dinner, they dropped me off at my dorm and we said goodbye. It was definitely sad, but with all the day's craziness, I was ready to get into bed and sleep for as long as I could before the bulk of Jump Start started the next morning.

For brevity's sake, I'm not going to recap every detail of every day at Jump Start, only the real highlights. On Monday we had our very first morning meet up with our LC and then met the faculty member assigned to our group, a chemistry professor. We spent the morning with her, then our LC started our tradition of getting lunch together after our morning session. There was a large lecture for a bunch of LCs that afternoon about how to learn best in university, then the Jump Start opening ceremonies, dinner, and some social activities. Monday night we also went down to Wreck Beach, the beach on campus, to watch the sunset. It was as beautiful as you'd imagine a west coast sunset by the mountains would be, and then some:) Tuesday day was similar to Monday with a morning session, lunch, and a larger group afternoon session, but after that Amy and I decided to go to the gym. For the whole week of Jump Start, first years got free access to all the gyms, so we decided to try one of them out and get some exercise to avoid the freshman fifteen to the best of our ability. It was nice to work out after having had so many months off after crew season/a leg injury that cut my crew season a little short. That night there was a talent show in the student union building, so we watched a bunch of very talented people sing and dance and act and play different instruments (including two insanely good beatboxers!!).

Wednesday was yet another iteration of the first few days with a gym visit, but with a noteworthy lunch of the best pizza I've ever had at a place on campus called Mercante. That afternoon there was a sale at the bookstore, so I finally got myself a UBC sweatshirt. That night, Amy and I and our friend Jaidyn from our floor met some girls at dinner that we ended up going to get ice cream and playing Cards Against Humanity with. That night was one of the highlights of the whole week for me, because it finally felt like I was with a group of people I could see myself spending more time with in the future, and because I got ice cream:) Thursday morning started the same way as all the others had, but in the afternoon, the craziness of the week hit me and I ended up taking a long nap before we went to watch the UBC women's soccer team play and beat Western Washington University. We even had our own personal hypeman Crazy P who got everyone to chant and cheer all game long.

Friday was the last official day of Jump Start so we spent the day doing activities with our LC like a scavenger hunt through the Beaty Biodiversity Museum and some last ice breakers before saying goodbye to the group we had spent so much time with. It was so nice to have a constant group of people to be with among the overwhelming number of new faces everywhere I went, so even though I knew we'd stay in touch, it was a little sad to leave the group that had made me feel comfortable on campus. Friday night I went to my first frat party as I'm sure my parents are just thrilled to hear, and I actually had a blast. We went with a group of seven people which was the perfect size, and had fun dancing for a few hours despite the fact that the frat house was definitely at least 100 degrees F. The next morning I got up to go explore Pacific Spirit regional park (which is right on the edge of campus) with a friend from my LC, and we walked around in the woods and on the beach admiring the views of the Pacific Northwest. The rest of the day was very lowkey until we went to a UBC football game, which we lost pretty badly... Today has been a chill day trying to get some chores done, doing laundry, getting used to the fact that the rest of the residential kids moved in yesterday.

This week was, honestly, exhausting. But I have made some friends that I can see myself being with for a while, and I'm optimistic that there are many more in my future. The hardest part of this week has really just been being away from my friends. It was tough to go from such a tight group to being more or less completely on my own, and it's hard knowing that a lot of my friends are still together back in NH. Until I've found a group that gives me as much as my friends back home did, I assume that I'll get bouts of missing them, but that's what FaceTime and social media are for:) I hope all the other college kids that moved in this week are having a good time, and that they know they are not alone in feeling a little out of place or homesick.