Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Two girls sit at a table in the corner of the Kansas Union fourth floor. One unfolds a pamphlet offering information about Jayhawk traditions and when the libraries open. Young faces float around the rest of the floor.
Kylinn Gerstner and Paige Stephens are in no hurry.
They’re just waiting. You sit around a lot when you go to summer orientation.
“We’re just hanging out,” Stephens said.
Stephens and Gerster learned the truth about summer orientation on a humid July day. They chose classes, finalized living arrangements and waited. But they’ll never have to do it again. They’re about to be freshmen, full-time students at the University, and members of the class of 2012.
They’re two of thousands, part of a group on the precipice of college.
*****
Stephens and Gerstner’s hometown, Colby, is home to five to six thousand people.
“6,000 on a good day,” Gerstner says.
The University can almost multiply that number by five.
But Gerstner’s not worried. She’s thinking about majoring in biochemistry. She wants to go into medicine. But mostly, she is looking forward to dorm life – she’s living in McCollum – and a “wide selection of guys,” Gerstner says.
In July, Gerstner had talked to her roommate once.
“She seems nice,” she said.
But she’s worried living with someone she’s never met.
Stephens is worried too. But for another reason. She says she doesn’t want to live at G.S.P, and as of July, that’s where she was scheduled to live.
Stephens will be on the KU Crew team, and she’s a second generation Jayhawk. Her mom went here. Her sister is coming here too, a transfer from Colby Community College.
“It’ll be nice to have her,” Stephen’s said.
*****
Gina Cohen listens to music on her headphones amidst the organized chaos of orientation. She’s from Overland Park, just 30 minutes away.
Cohen’s brother will be a senior this year. Her older sister already graduated. She didn’t need to take one of those campus tours, she says. She knows Lawrence, and she loves it.
“I like the vibe,” Cohen said. “It has a lot of culture, even though it seems like a small town in the middle of nowhere.”
But Cohen says another thing pulled her to the University. She was at her Overland Park home in early April, with the television on. She watched Kansas beat Memphis for the National Championship and she saw how the students reacted.
“I was thinking, I’d like to go there,” Cohen said.
*****
Up the stairs from Cohen, Tim Ellis, an incoming freshman from Manhattan, waits for his Mom. He’s about to walk into another presentation.
Mario Chalmers’s shot didn’t affect Ellis’ college decision.
The University just gave him more scholarship money than anywhere else, he says. He’s majoring in chemical engineering. He wants to go medical school, or maybe just focus on research, he says. His test scores and grades put him in the honors placement program. He’s a little concerned about taking sophomore English as a freshman. But he said looking forward to living off-campus with friends and being on his own.
The presentation is about to begin, and Ellis needs to go.
“Yea,” he says, “Just being in college.”
For Gerstner, Stephens and Cohen, it’s the same feeling. College, at last.
— Edited by Sachiko Miyakawa
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