Sea of Lime Green

Any Emory student will tell you the lime green shirts have been missing for three days now. The campus was flooded this past week with 1300 freshmen and with them 120 Orientation Leaders. I was one of the many Orientation Leaders (OL's as they say), eager for the new year and eager for the incoming class.

Events kicked off at McDonough field, where we forced the freshmen to learn two brand new Emory chants. Emory's said to have a lack of spirit, but it exist only among student actions. I mean in an ocean of intellectuals, no professor or role model is telling students to act like idiots from time to time. Everyone's scared of being positive, outgoing dare I say. The freshmen did just that on McDonough field and some protested the chants by standing erect during the "swoop" fight song. I don't blame them. Spirit takes time to grow and is best acquired through other students rather than orders. If more Emory students attended sports games, then we could begin to build on tradition and spirit instead of letting it remain stale.

In any event, the Orientation week was filled with 8 AM alarm clocks, an extremely long Move-In day (which included a visit from President Wagner at Dobb's Hall), and plenty of heat from both confused parents and the beaming sun. Move-In day started off with a chuckle, as President Wagner's first suitcase attempt included breaking off one of it's handles. In his defense, the suitcase was over packed and beyond its age. But it' s still ironic that the President of Emory breaks an incoming freshmen's luggage upon arrival. We all played it cool and then shouldered together for newspaper pictures with the Prez.

Orientation is this crazy ride of fatigue and pandemonium. There's a comedian, a hypnotist, some songfest practice, grueling sixteen hour days, add in academic meetings, and freshmen rendezvous and your well beyond the saturation point of sanity for the day. It's all in good fun though, and the best part has to be meeting the incoming class. I have the privelege of meeting eighteen awesome people and showing them this great institution of Emory (minus the post office). I get to share my Emory experience and all this school has done for me with total strangers. Somehow wearing a highlighter green T-shirt, khakis, and white sneakers for a solid week becomes well worth the Orientation experience.