On campus it is new student move-in day. I guess the fact that a lot of our students come in with so much transfer and AP credit makes "freshman" a bit less appropriate than it might otherwise be? Anyway, there are a lot of cars in town today that were not there last night. I am staying home, not going to a restaurant beyond the morning's breakfast in a cafe next to the farmers' market, and not trying to buy anything in the grocery store lines (let alone wander up the street to Walmart, at which things are of Black Friday proportions!).
It is also the weekend that the students who are living off campus are moving into their apartments, in large part because, although classes don't start until Thursday, their parents have the weekend off and they are helping students move into apartments and houses all over town. I generally miss this event as well, but for a couple of reasons I have not been able to completely ignore it this year. I don't mind -- this is an experience I have only lived vicariously since I was an undergrad, and it is kinda nice to see it in all its glory.
Follow me below the orange interchange of life's highway for some thoughts from a teacher and townie's point of view.
I do think of myself as a townie. I work at the university (or "the college" as the old-timers in town still call it, although it hasn't been named a "College" since 1972), but I have lived here in this small town of well under 20,000 since 1991. Even removing the semesters I have been away because of sabbaticals or teaching abroad, I have lived here longer than even the town I was born in, where my parents still live. This summer, when argumentation came up about what the "locals" think about a human rights ordinance, as opposed to what those who work at the university think, I commented on the local tv station's website that I considered myself a "local" and that I had lived here long enough and committed myself to a life here, and I should not be ignored, simply because I had the position of working where I do. The "college" has been here since the 1860s, certainly longer than almost any other business in town. I feel sometimes I am comparing UID numbers in the real world (does anyone use the term "meat space" any more?).
The reason I am more aware of it being move-in day all over town is that my neighbors, who were really pretty good neighbors last year, were gone all summer. They are undergrad girls -- three of them, with I think one car, although there are often other cars parked there (boyfriends or other friends). They are polite, friendly but not so much that they have ever introduced themselves by name, and generally take pretty decent care of the place, picking up trash, etc. We share a driveway so I am acutely aware of these neighbors to my west. I have had good ones and bad ones, the latter of whom wanted to use the driveway for themselves and parked on their half of a shared driveway, making the other half impassable, and calling the police when I went up and knocked on their front door to ask them to move the truck so I could get to my garage. Eventually they moved out, leaving trash behind in the house, and not paying their bills so they got notices from the city saying the water was going to be turned off for non-payment, etc. I would much rather have the odd beer bottle in the front lawn, let me assure you! The girls are back, and one seems to have been moving her stuff out today, so there will either be just two, or there will be a new one moving in over the next couple of days.
I also had a student of my own come and get some furniture from me that I have had since I moved here (I bought it used) that I gave to her and her roommates. They will use it and pass it on to other students, I am sure. It was made of 4x4 pieces of wood, with a spring hammock-like base and plaid (orange, white, brown) foam-stuffed cushions. It was not my taste, but it was sturdy, cheap when I bought it, and still is comfortable to sit on (and the couch to sleep on!). Perfect for student use. It was, however, too heavy and bulky to walk down several street blocks, and too big to fit into a car, so they waited until they got back to town and had a moving van and the furniture is now gone from my house.
When I was an undergrad I lived in the dorms all four years. All our dorms were all-year dorms, with freshmen through seniors in them, and very few people lived off-campus. In grad school, no one essentially lived in dorms, although there were a few (and I lived in one) that were privately-owned and geared toward grad students, with suites of small single rooms and a shared kitchen and bathroom for six people. After two years I moved out and lived in apartments in the city, each for two years. I missed the co-op living my brother and a friend experienced at their Big 10 schools, and the "arts dorm" experience several of my high school friends had at a Big 8 one. And here, in my current town, there is a marked "student ghetto" where there are smashed beer bottles in the grass and the few houses that are residential are waging a losing battle to keep the neighborhoods looking attractive by planting flowers and keeping their lawns grassy and well-tended, their houses painted on a regular basis, and a reasonable limit of cars parked in their backyards or even in front of the houses on the dirt (there is limited on-street parking in these areas as the streets are too narrow for garbage trucks to pass if there are cars along one side of the road). My area is just on the far side away from the campus, and while it is easy to walk to and from campus, and there are a lot of houses that serve as rental units, they are not necessarily rented to undergrad students. There are some families and some med students (we have a free-standing medical/health sciences university in town as well as the state university). You want to live next door to med students, let me assure you! They are quiet and you will never ever see them except to nod politely to, as they are off to classes with their laptops and extra large coffee mugs.
For some of the students who live in shared houses in the couple of blocks surrounding campus, I cannot imagine how they get studying done. The afternoons are so loud, and the aftermath of the parties so clear when I walk in past the silent houses in the mornings, I shudder to think what it is like trying to succeed in reviewing material and writing papers in the environment. I am guessing there are students who have rooms on the quiet side of the buildings (away from the booming stereos), who share houses with a bunch of geeks like themselves (after all, we have no reputation as a party school; although the students complain on Facebook there is nothing to do but drink in town -- they are clearly not all doing so!), and those whose study habits and abilities are such that they would be productive no matter their environment. I must have had hundreds of just such students over the past 20 years of teaching and I don't know who they were as their living situations never came up in conversation. And, frankly, that is just fine with me. I would rather talk about their academics if possible, as I can help with that.
Welcome back, returning students, no matter where you live! And welcome frosh (both men and women)! I am looking forward to the semester. We have all sorts of cool stuff in store for us this coming year -- fasten your seatbelts.