College Freshman, Day One

As of Thursday 8/27 my oldest is a college freshman.  That’s pretty unbelievable.

He was mapping out his routes around campus and changing his class schedule right up until tonight trying to get everything worked out so he can get across the Big Red Spread from class to class.  He has an hour between each class, which I think is a good idea for the first semester.  Next time he can recalibrate and will know what classes he can put end to end.

He’s excited, but you can tell he’s a bit nervous, too.  No one knows who you are or what you can do so you have to begin to prove yourself all over again.  Plus, as I’ve tried to remind him over and over, they will not coddle him at the university the way they tend to in the school here.  It’s all about personal responsibility — wanting to be there, wanting to learn and wanting to succeed.  They’ll be plenty happy to take your money and flunk you if you don’t.

Even though I thought I was prepared for the cost I’ll admit the book prices took my breath away.  He has five classes and his book cost was $523.  He was in one of the last orientation sessions so one of the last on the book reservation list, thus most of the used books were gone, but still.  Amazing how expensive some of these books are.  One computer book was something like $130.