They say that college is some of the best four years of your life. Although I have only completed my freshman year, I can confirm this statement to be positively, absolutely, 100% by all means, true.
If you haven’t read my introductory article (you should), I go to the University of Delaware.
Go Blue Hens! I love it up there, if you couldn't tell already. Being forced to leave campus for so long pains me. There isn’t much for me to do in quarantine aside from thinking about what I would be doing if I was still up at college.
I’ve procrastinated writing this post for a while. Maybe it’s because there are so many stories for me to choose from. I have kept a journal of the events of everyday since I began attending UD. Now that my freshman year is over though, it’s time for me to stop procrastinating this and start talking about what college life is like.
Before I do that, I need to take you to the beginning of my college journey. The VERY beginning, back to Senior year of high school! Ah high school, when jocks were jocks and nerds were nerds. I fell into the latter category of course. Luckily, I was a very well respected nerd. No wet willies or whirlies for me! Just the feeling of not being cool. Yeah!
Anyway, Senior year is the big year when you have to start applying for college and thinking about the future. Cause, everyone likes thinking about what’s ahead of them. Since I went to a local school, the University of Delaware was a definite option for me. It was also free to apply to the school from in-state, it didn’t cost a cool hundred like some OTHER schools.
I was a pretty ambitious student in high school, so I applied to a lot of big Computer Science schools. Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Georgia Tech. All rejections. Actually, I was put on the waiting list for Georgia Tech and eventually got an acceptance, but it was way too far into the decision process for me to consider it. My friend (who coincidentally goes to Georgia Tech) applied to many more big name schools, and got many more rejection letters. It’s amazing how high the standards some of these schools have.
The only other college I got accepted to was Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. It’s a school up in Troy, New York that has a big focus on Science and Technology. I was pretty happy that at least one big Comp Sci school wanted me in their program.
My family and I took a trip up there to tour the campus. We just so happened to tour the campus on the nicest day Northern New York has seen in years. I was literally getting the best possible view of the campus.
The problem with Rensselaer was that it was out of state, in New York. Even with twenty five thousand dollars given to me in scholarships, I still would have had to pay fifty thousand dollars annually. I begged the financial aid office to give me more money. They weren’t too helpful.
So it came down to University of Delaware and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. I took a tour of the University of Delaware campus before I made any decisions. UD had a much different feel to it. It felt like a place where I was going to meet people with different interests than me, not just people in the STEM field.
In the end, I felt as though the University of Delaware still offered a pretty good Computer Science program. The minimal difference between it’s program and Rensselaer’s was not enough to justify the higher cost. So, on decision day, I committed to the University of Delaware. “With the first pick on decision day, Mattastical Matt selects… University of Delaware, Newark DE.”
That whole Summer I spent hyping myself up for college life. It was gonna be so cool. I went to New Student Orientation, got my courses scheduled, and was just overall ready to move on to the next phase of life.
Before I started any classes up at the University, I participated in something known as QUEST: Question, Understand, Explore, Serve, Transform. It’s led by the leadership program at UD and is a ton of fun!
QUEST is this year-long leadership experience for first-year students at UD. It’s kind of like a mini Summer-camp before college life starts. It is a journey of self-discovery and personal leadership development while gaining the confidence to support a successful student experience on campus (Ok MAYBE I ripped that right from their website. But I'm giving credit to them!).
I learned about QUEST at new student orientation. One of my friends also participated in it and said I would enjoy it. I took their advice, like I do when literally anyone I know tells me something.
QUEST began about a week before fall semester classes, so I had a few weeks after I found out about it until it started. When the day finally came, I said goodbye to my house and drove up there with my dad.
We left early to allow time to figure out where we were going. I’m very glad we did that. You see, the University of Delaware is split up into three different sections: North (Laird) campus, Central Campus, and South Campus. QUEST met up at north campus, which I didn’t really know way around (despite the fact I had been there multiple times prior). There also weren’t a lot of signs posted telling us which building we were supposed to go to, so we got mega lost.
We had to ask a lot of people nearby where it was, and it took us well over an hour to finally figure out our destination. I was pretty much one of the last people to sign in and was behind in getting to know other people. Luckily, my charming personality makes up for lost time like that.
For some reason at QUEST, you spend your first night in one of the buildings on North Campus and THEN get to move into your designated halls. I guess it has to do with when the rest of early move-in is at UD. At least I beat the move-in day rush, so that was a plus.
QUESTer’s (I think that’s what we were called) are put into different groups led by a Peer Mentor. Peer Mentors are, well, exactly what they sound like. They guide you through the different activities QUEST offers and act as a resource to you throughout the year.
The Peer Mentor of my group was a man named Charlie. I know I don’t usually name people in my blogs, but his name is important to the story. Charlie is a Computer Science major like me, so he was pretty helpful in guiding me through QUEST and the Comp Sci program. He is an Eagles fan though, but I let that slide.
We called our group the Oompa Loompas. Ya know, like Charlie and the Chocolate factory? We even had a group chant. Hmm, lets see if I remember how it goes:
♪Oompa Loompa Doopity-Dee!♪
♪His name is Charles, but we call him Charlie!♪
And there was a dance to go along with it. Basically like a crab walk kinda thing.
The QUEST week was a lot of fun. They had a couple of pretty vivacious speakers with some pretty empowering messages on leadership and helping the community. Okay maybe not that empowering since I can’t remember them off the top of my head. They are written down somewhere though.
There were some pretty cool activities as well. We did this one activity where we determined what type of leader we were and put on a little skit about it. My leadership style was blue (we categorized them by colors) by the largest of margins. Blue leaders basically are very loving and compassionate and like the absence of chaos. I’d say that’s a pretty accurate description of me.
There was also an activity where we wrote down one of our personal challenges or struggles on a wooden board, then karate chopped it. I thought that one was pretty cool. It’s like giving yourself a fresh start to college, letting your fears know you are in control of them these next four years. Until final exams roll around and they take over briefly.
I don’t want this post to go on too much longer, especially since we did a lot of stuff that week. So I’m just gonna talk about the two other highlights of the week. The first highlight was the day we all did community service. There were a couple of different projects to choose from, so I picked the outdoorsy one since I like saving the environment. Yeah, go earth!
We were in a park cleaning up trash and picking up these prickly balls on the playground. My highlight of that whole experience was when I found this hidden rock under one of the pieces of playground equipment. I was so excited when I found that rock. I was showing it off to everyone, taking pictures:
I’m a weird person.
The second highlight of the week was when we spent an entire day at this place called Sandy Hill up in Maryland. It’s kind of like a camp, at least that was the vibe I got. I mean, there was a totem pole there and you really only see totem poles at camps so...
We started out the day doing all these cool outdoor activities. There was one where you are harnessed to a rope and swung down from a great height. There was also a rock climbing one. That one was actually kind of scary, it just finished raining and the wall was pretty slippery. We were harnessed to a rope and all but, like, how much am I supposed to trust that rope? Gravity works, I’ve seen it my whole life.
After those early morning activities, we moved into this team building exercise with our QUEST groups. We were given a bunch of materials and a couple of hours to build a boat/raft. And we had to sail it in a nearby lake. None of us were really keen on going into the dirty lake in the first place. Especially after the boat we crafted. We had a pretty good idea, but had some pretty poor execution of it. I’m sure our design would have worked in a normal boat. Not so much in our contraption, held together by a plastic tarp. We didn’t go very far in that raft.
That night we all had a bonfire by the lakeside and just partied the night away. Cause that’s what college is all about, PARTYING! We threw the boards we karate-chopped into the bonfire, it was supposed to symbolize getting over our fears or something like that. And then we all had a free hug session at the end. Because, everyone needs a hug!
So that’s pretty much how my college life here at UD started, with QUEST. I’m very content with my decision to do QUEST. I made a lot of friends before even starting college and got a head start on adjusting to college life.
Speaking of which, I apologize that I didn’t really get into stories from the actual semester of college. But you know what they say, you can’t have a good story without a good introduction. And hey, if you have any good stories from UD that you want me to talk about next time, I’m all ears. Of course, I do have to be present for those memories. I can’t really talk about something I wasn’t there for.
Until my next Blue Hen Stories (which probably won’t take long, I have lots of them), stay Mattastic!
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