September 6, 2006

Striking a Balance: OWU's New Year Begins

After a full week of attending orientation activities and settling into a new home, freshmen are thrown into their first week of college.  They soon learn that college is going to be different.

During the first week of school, the Hamilton-Williams Campus Center is filled with club tables and people screaming from every direction to come join.  Automatically, freshmen sign up for every club they are remotely interested in or any club that hands out free school supplies, at least that’s what I did as a freshman.

But soon classes begin and freshmen realize there isn’t time for every club, and that college is more about balancing the workload with the always-tempting and seemingly ongoing social scene. One freshman I spoke with, Amber Cole, seems to have everything under control. Amber went to high school in Columbus and took two post-secondary classes at The Ohio State University.  She is now taking five classes in her first semester at Ohio Wesleyan.  With a smile on her face, she says, “I get up every morning and make a To-Do list.”  When she is not studying, Amber is on her bicycle cycling around campus in training for her next triathlon.

Through her post-secondary classes, Amber was able to test out of the freshman composition class, but she says she will probably have to take the new math requirement at Ohio Wesleyan.

As for freshman composition, this year’s freshman composition text is “The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2005.”   During the summer prior to their freshman year at Ohio Wesleyan, new students received a copy of the book.

Every year, the English department joins with the directors of the Sagan National Colloquium to select a text and create a curriculum that ties into the Colloquium’s subject, which this year has everything to do with science.   The writers of booklist declare “The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2005”… “top-notch writing about diverse scientific and nature-related subjects is proving to be an invaluable gathering of not only lively reports on science but also has incisive analyses of the politics of science.”

With the second week of classes just beginning, the honeymoon period now is over and professors are buckling down on all students.  The year has begun, summer is over.  And even though most freshmen are still trying to figure out where Phillips Hall is, the puzzled looks on their faces have started to fade.

— Emily Uline-Olmstead '08