After a good 7 hour drive, I moved in to my triple dorm at UC Irvine Middle Earth on September 20th. If I were to be completely honest, the hardest part for me was saying goodbye to my family because I’ve never been this far from home. It’s harder for myself since I can’t visit my family whenever I want due to our distance unlike other students who are 20 minutes away from school. However, saying goodbye was bittersweet I knew I wanted to be at UCI and I knew it would lead me to do great things. Attending UCI was just a huge step of mine, to open the door to a new atmosphere and the next chapter of my journey. As I stepped into my residence hall, everyone was super friendly and said hi to each other because we are all in the exact same shoes—clueless with so much independence for the first time in our lives. I met so many people and was totally overwhelmed with so many names to remember. Aside from move in weekend, I’ve only been in Irvine for 2 days but it feels like I’ve lived here for months. There’s so much walking around in college compared to high school and I’m not used to it yet but I know I eventually will be! My roommates and I were panting and so out of breath and class hasn’t even started yet. You might be wondering what are we doing walking around all over campus? Well, in the quarter school instruction for us doesn’t start until September 24th so the student body of UCI as well as many other clubs have been hosting Welcome Week events from a concert to a movie in our very own Aldrich Park, to an Anteater Involvement Fair (which is basically Club Awareness day except ten times more crowded), to a hypnotist show, to a ton of social gathering events with FREE food, and even trying to set the record for the World’s Largest Game of Capture the Flag! Well, that’s it for now I’m leaving now to go explore the campus some more and try to become more involved even if I get lost (which is 100000% bound to happen)
