  College sneaks up on you like a Green Beret. One minute, it seemed, I was lazing away my days without a care in the world in our family’s new house. (We’ve exchanged Hawaii for Yorktown, VA, alas, a trade-off which must rank as the moving equivalent of the Sox trading Babe Ruth to New York…) Suddenly without warning I was knee-deep in notebooks, tiny shampoo bottles, and bags of Target socks. If there’s a lesson to be gleaned from this, (other than that Target makes some darn comfy socks), it is to pack and prepare for college early and get ahead of the curve.
 I had elected to participate in UR’s Road Map program. I was vaguely aware at the time that it involved courses on adjusting to college life, but all I really amidst the fine print was that it allowed me to move in three days before the rest of campus. Thus I arrived on the 17th of August Rubbermaid containers in tow only having to confront the weary gazes of about three-score leery freshmen as opposed to the teeming mass I’d have faced on the regular move-in date.
  Move-in advantages aside, the Road Map program turned out to be a wonderful experience and, if I may add, a great decision on my part. Within a day I had met plenty of people, gotten my bearings on the campus, and learned that you definitely cannot exit the dining hall the same way you come in. (A note to future spiders: The UR dining hall is known to students only as “D-hall” and nothing else. Several times during my first week on campus I revealed my freshmen status by making this elementary mistake. Let us never speak of this matter again.) If you get the opportunity to participate in Road Map definitely do so. It will help get the awkwardness out of your system long before your other classmates arrive.
 The regular move-in day was, as it must be on every college campus, one of organized chaos. If you’ve ever seen those nature documentaries in which an entire herd of wildebeest attempt to ford a river full of crocodiles, you have some idea of what move-in day is like. (Though it is mercifully free of crocodiles.) I helped my roommate get settled in, and we hit things off perfectly. (Of course we did, you’re saying to yourself, I had long since chosen my side of the room and allotted him the short end of the stick. You are of course correct. But for the record my roommate is actually a very cool guy.)
 I then went to my swearing-in ceremony for Army ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps). I am attending UR on a 4-year ROTC scholarship, which means in exchange for serving at least 4 years on the Army after graduation, Uncle Sam foots the bill for my education. (Alexander Johnson: your tax dollars at work, nation.) The ceremony was very well done and somber. After signing on the dotted line, we new cadets each took our oath of allegiance to the Constitution from our senior instructor Lieutenant Colonel Gillem. It was a nice counterbalance to the craziness of the past week and a fitting beginning to orientation and the start of classes. Â
