First week reflection

Korinne Petersik

Like many of Lawrence’s new students’, my own waning weeks of summer were ones saturated with sleepless nights and days that began sometime in late afternoon, when the rest of the busy world had just returned from lunch breaks or doctor’s appointments or, like my high school friends, fifth-hour class.I seemed to be living in some remote oasis, some Utopian dream, in which no work existed and life was rife with possibilities not pertaining at all to responsibility.

I was totally unprepared when I started to feel jealous of friends who had already taken exams at their colleges and turned in five-page papers.

However, it was exactly this sensation – this actual desire to be at school, this passion to learn – that made me realize I was ready for a Lawrence education.

My arrival at Lawrence’s campus and the Welcome Week activities did anything but disappoint me. But it was truly when we were all forced to work together for the common necessity of companionship that I realized I wasn’t about to enter a stage of life in which I could flourish without changing.

Because I grew up in a fairly homogeneous (one might even say “uncultured”) town, my greatest anticipation upon arriving at Lawrence was encountering students from diversified backgrounds.

Even so, I was definitely not prepared to be the only girl on my floor from Wisconsin (although even this has proved to be an incredibly positive experience.)

I’ve already discovered that at a place like Lawrence, you don’t have to come from far away to become immersed in a completely new society, because a microcosm of the nation has already formed here.

What I think will really make these next four years so remarkable, however, is that, despite the fact that I came from a city 45 minutes away from Appleton, while it took my roommate several days to trek from her hometown all the way here, we’ve all come for a similar purpose: to satiate our desire for growth, education, and friendship.