What Orientation Did and Didn't Teach
Going to college is scary. Going to college two states away is even scarier. Arriving at Gustavus to be greeted by the loud, obnoxious and overwhelming Gustie Greeters was down right terrifying. I’ve changed a lot from the girl who drove up College Avenue last September, and it goes beyond not being scared of the Gustie Greeters anymore.
The last thing my mother told me as she drove away that afternoon was “go to church.” Being a typical 18-year-old I didn’t. I didn’t go to chapel. I didn’t pray. I didn’t once crack open my Bible. I started to replace God with bad friends, alcohol, boys, and just the effort of “keeping busy.” There was a void inside that I was trying to fill, and I eventually saw that it wasn’t working. I started to feel lost, upset, and stranded with no where to turn. I tried to distract myself with work and The Bachelor but still nothing helped. I didn’t know what to do, who I could talk to, or where I might fit in.
I’d arrived early that Fall to participate in Freshman Orientation. It was a weekend jam packed with cheesy name games, tours of campus, multiple dances every night, and several theater productions.
These were filmed at this year's Freshman Orientation (2010).
These productions taught me the difference between transgender and bisexual. They taught me that a sock on the door meant that there was a baby not being made (thanks to the free condoms) inside. They taught me the definition of blue balls, bondage and premature. I was enlightened. I was also terrified. I learned from the upperclassman that bias incidents were common, that there are more words for “lesbian” than I ever knew and that apparently yelling obscenities at the incoming class was how Gustavus welcomed people.
Now there were some great lessons I took from Orientation. There was a great skit about body image that almost made me cry. There was a fantastic conversation about how hurtful words can be with my Greeter Group afterwards. I even thought Captain Condom was pretty funny.
Unfortunately, none of these lessons really were going to help me with the crisis I was experiencing by second semester. No one taught me what to do if I thought a friend was an alcoholic. All the stuff I’d learned about healthy homosexual relationships wasn’t much help in my unhealthy heterosexual one. No one had bothered to teach me how to help a friend who refused to eat. I’d learned where to get condoms but not how to say no. We’d talked about atheism but not about how students kept God in their busy lives. I had been taught to not leave a drunk friend alone, but not how to find friends who didn’t drink in the first place.
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