My First Day of College (Part I)

My eyes darted from each passing stony face.  My heart pounded.  Butterflies infiltrated my stomach.

It felt like the first day of high school all over again.

Except this time, I was completely on my own.

I had arrived an hour early.  I took a little tour of the campus to waste time.  I only walked to the library before I turned around, however, and returned to the building near my first class.

There were a lot of people sitting on the benches outside the Liberal Arts building.  Some were with another person.  Some were alone.  Those alone, however, had ipod earbuds smashed in their ears or a cellphone or book glued to their fingers.

A hopeful conversationalist’s dream.

Not.

I decided to sit between two girls who were spread out on their respective ends of one seating area.  On my right, the girl was plugged in to her ipod.  On my left, the girl was texting.  But, she was looking up every once in a while, and was only texting occasionally.

I sat there feeling a bit awkward at first.  I concentrated my attention to my jacket sleeve which had some loose strings and then flipped mindlessly through my International Relations textbook.  The boys across from me on the opposite seating area stared at me like they could see through my calm façade.  I decided to shut off my imagination and not project my own feelings onto them.

As I was glancing up quite a bit, I noticed the girl texting was looking up quite a bit too and seemed kind of bored.

So I decided to try talking to her.

“Is this your first time at college?” I finally asked, turning to her.

“Yeah I had my first class earlier,” she replied, turning to me and smiling.

“Oh cool!  It’s my first day here too!”

And that, my friends, was the start of what ended up being a 45 minute conversation with a stranger.  It was a long time to talk to someone I knew nothing about, but it went well.  It did not feel awkward at all.  Just being in the same setting, college, gave us plenty to talk about.  As it was about time for our next class, I suggested swapping numbers, and we did!

I was feeling pumped after my great start to the day and marched into my first class, International Relations, with confidence…

(Stay tuned for Part II…) *This is like a comic book!*