Credit: Free Food
Camp Yale is, at its best, a free all-you-can-eat buffet. Actually, it’s like 15 free all-you-can-eat buffets. You and your new classmates will be thrown together at any number of events that have different and important-sounding names but actually mean free food.
I can help you decode your nicely color-blocked and incredibly confusing “Orientation Overview” sheet.
—Master’s Open Houses: mini-everything, but in max-quantity—brownies, pigs-in-blankets, tiny quiches. Load up your small plastic plate and smile awkwardly.
—President’s Reception: an open-air feast—at least six flavors of cupcakes outside of Beinecke.
So yeah, treat Camp Yale like you are a starved lion released into a pack of wildebeest, except maybe less violent (but don’t be afraid to throw an elbow or two if a cupcake’s on the line). This is where you learn that in college free food is gold. Or dead wildebeest, or whatever. So maybe it’s not totally free, since your tuition pays for it, which actually makes it pretty expensive, but it’s not coming out of your pocket and it’s just sitting right in front of you and you can’t focus on what your FroCo is saying because you’re looking at it. Take it. The Freshman 15 is an underestimate, and sorry, but it’s inevitable. So get started.
—Sophie Haigney
D: Formalwear
If you’re anxious about getting your money’s-worth out of your grad suit, fear not. Whether it’s for residential college dinners, assemblies, or mock-tail parties, you’ll be in a blazer so often you’ll think you’re still at riding camp. This would all be great fun if these events didn’t take place mostly outdoors or in unairconditioned Woolsey at the end of August. But actually it wouldn’t be because there’s nothing more disheartening than seeing your future classmates in gold-buttoned jackets and pleated khakis.
—David Rossler
Fail: Froco group meetings
Your FroCo is not a bad person. Actually, he or she is probably a good person and a helpful person who will prove a great resource at some point. At the very least, he or she will provide you with candy or condoms during a time of need, and probably a lot more.
But during camp Yale you will not realize this. Why? FroCo Group meetings. So, it’s 9:00, and you want play a post-dinner game of ultimate frisbee with your BFFFFDFF (best friend for first few days of freshman fall). It’s 10:00 and you want to start drinking with the mens’ lacrosse team, who you hear have a super cool basement in their frat? It’s any time of day and you want to have an Intellectual Discussion because finally you are at Yale with people who want to talk about Real Things? Too bad, you have a FroCo meeting about how to do your laundry.
Cast of characters: about 10 overanxious incoming Yale freshmen, one over- whelmed and outnumbered senior. One of the freshmen will inevitably be The Kid Who Asks Endlessly Specific and Irrelevant Questions like, “I know I want to be an engineering major, electrical not chemical, but I also think I might want to apply for the Journalism Initiative, and I’m shopping two different languages right now, so how do I do my laundry?” I’m not kidding.
This kid will have an antithesis, Jaded Guy or Jaded Girl. He or she probably went to prep school, does a lot of eye-rolling, and always has somewhere infinitely cooler to be (read: drinking with prep school friends in the super cool basement of the lacrosse frat). He or she will make lots of helpful comments that begin with, “Yeah, when I lived away from home before…” and will probably require FroCo intervention after excessive drinking in the basement of the lacrosse frat. Hopefully, you fall somewhere in between. So, grin and bear it, low-grade sweat through the 10 meetings and trust that it gets better. Who knows, you might even make a FGF (FroCo Group Friend). Emphasis on might.
—Sophie Haigney
Credit: Exploration
College is a time for exploring your boundaries. Socially, academically, sexually, and even geographically! You can impress a group of fellow freshmen by showing them the library you’ve discovered or go on an evening adventure (wink wink) as a fun bonding experience (wink wink) with that cutie in your FroCo group (wink wink—no, actually, don’t do that).
You can start your self-expansion in your cozy double: unless you are a wizard or an old person disguised as a teenager, your new home is probably the oldest building you’ve ever lived in. There are fire escapes, secret doorways, and stairs leading to rooftop access. Climb ’em! Further afield, visit the farmer’s market in Wooster Square, trek to the Yale Farm at the top of Science Hill, and go to East Rock Park. Long walks and hot weather: Birkenstock wearers, this is where you shine.
—Claire Goldsmith
D: Handshakes
There’s not enough dining hall Purell in the world to cleanse you of the Camp Yale handshakes, and that’s only the beginning. From now on, every time you meet a new person, you will both stick out your hands, grasp ‘em, and probably say, “Nice to meet you.” Which is great! So friendly, so professional, so charmingly sophisticated. When you call your mom and mention this, she will get a little choked up and say something about how Yale is already turning out to be a magical place, sweetie, and you’re becoming an adult. But does shaking hands with another 18-year-old mean you’re both adults or is it all an elaborate charade to mask our impostor syndrome? Why expose yourself to so many germs? Is all that enthusiasm genuine or manufactured as part of a complex experiment (the Truman Show: College Edition) ? Just some things to think about next time you’re faced with a new set of digits.
—Claire Goldsmith
Fail: Applications
Sorry, 2019. You thought it ended with the acceptance letter, but the “application process” is alive and well here in New Haven. Many of those extracurriculars you excitedly signed up for will ask you to apply for membership or positions, whether as a self-important barrier to entry or some sort of weird practice for life as an adult (see D, above) or maybe for something actually useful. Just like college applications, some are serious, some are painless, and some are zany. Over the summer, I received an application asking me to write an acrostic poem with the letters of my first name. Here it is.
Clearly, someone
Likes
Amateur poetry
In a very different
Respect than I do.
Egads!
—Claire Goldsmith
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