Car upon car line the streets of St. Peter and Gustavus as move-in day commences and the fall semester of 2016 gets underway.
For many students, however, this is a period of great stress.
The reason for this being they have one day to move in and get settled in their new dorms and apartments before the rigor of class work begins.
The first-years are lucky with orientation weekend, which allows them to learn the ins and outs of their new dorm rooms and gives them the freedom and free time to drive or walk to St. Peter in order to acquire any missing essentials.
For the upperclassmen it is a little more difficult, and they may not get enough time to fully adapt to their new living quarters before the schedules, classes, labs, and homework take over and fill up their time.
This situation makes it difficult for the people who move in on Labor Day to get swiftly readjusted to their living situation.
Emotionally, this can also be a trying situation for students, as they leave the warm comforts of home for the educational bastion of Gustavus.
An adjustment period that allows them to find and reacquaint themselves with their college friends would also be beneficial and healthier once classes actually began.
It is even possible that such a shift would improve morale and grades in the opening weeks of the fall semester, improving the school’s overall grade point average.
The issue that arises is how to move everyone in early enough to get reasonably adjusted to their surroundings before beginning the school year while also not interfering with the first-year orientation activities.
Some would say to simply push everything back a week, allowing the first years to arrive almost a full week and a half before classes start.
However this also has its problems.
An argument can be made that having a week of completely unstructured activities will lead to general rambunctiousness and a superfluous amount of partying across campus.
So what is the solution?
A simple way to approach it may be to allow the upperclassmen to move in at the same time as the first-years.
While this presents its own challenges, and may seem a little overwhelming to the first-years at first, it has the most benefits for either party as it is unlikely any upperclassmen will interfere with the orientation week activities.
The campus could also attempt to sponsor a Welcome Back Week, with activities around campus for the upperclassmen to attend in order to help them get reacclimated to the college environment, and keep them task oriented and doing positive things.
Activities like an internship fair to help juniors and seniors find an internship for credit in the fall, or the various academic departments setting up structured lunches or events in the arboretum, are examples of welcome back events that could be done.
Move-in day is a wonderful tradition, one that has an extraordinary amount of energy as students return to school recharged and rested from their summers in order to further their education.
It’s filled with excitement, but also a sense of nervousness and trembling students who are diving directly into academic ordeals when they are so minimally set-up and less-than-comfortable within their living quarters.
It is a heady time for sure, but one that would be best pushed back a little further, so that students could feel more comfortable in their academic and social environment.