“You’re all on your own my precious daughter. You have to not depend on us. However, we’ll be there whenever you need us.” I got out of the car and waited for a moment, watching my mother drive away. When she disappeared around a corner, I walked inside to the unknown.
There I was, in a mesmerizing place, with no sense of direction. I was turning my head from side to side looking for the building I was told to go to a week ago. I stood at an intersection where the four roots led to big buildings. I stood there for a while and decided to ask for directions from a flock of students standing beside me. They were freshmen too and seeking the same building as I was.
We talked amongst each other and decided to head left. There was a huge unlabeled building with tens of students waiting at the doors ahead of us. It turned out, after asking, that it was our destination. I isolated myself from everyone and stood in a corner. After around fifteen, a couple of adults (who I assumed to be the one’s responsible for the first day orientation) opened the doors of the building from the inside. They stood at there for a while and the students entered one by one, and so did I.
There I was, in a mesmerizing place, with no sense of direction. I was turning my head from side to side looking for the building I was told to go to a week ago. I stood at an intersection where the four roots led to big buildings. I stood there for a while and decided to ask for directions from a flock of students standing beside me. They were freshmen too and seeking the same building as I was.
We talked amongst each other and decided to head left. There was a huge unlabeled building with tens of students waiting at the doors ahead of us. It turned out, after asking, that it was our destination. I isolated myself from everyone and stood in a corner. After around fifteen, a couple of adults (who I assumed to be the one’s responsible for the first day orientation) opened the doors of the building from the inside. They stood at there for a while and the students entered one by one, and so did I.
The place I just entered was a weird gymnasium; one that was used at the moment as a lecture hall and a stadium. Noises echoed in the large hall as the students filled up the seats. The seated students were blankly staring at a group of serious-looking adults consisting of both males and females, but not including the ones I saw at the doors. The adults were silent and checking the unseated noisy students moving about.
Personally, I sat in the end of one of the nine blocks that constituted the stadium. There was no one on my left, but on my right there was a colorfully-dressed girl, who was unique amongst the black-dressed students-including myself. There was noise everywhere and I started to get irritated. But the loud screech of a microphone save the moment and cleared the air. At this point, everybody was paying attention to the adults.
After the recitation of some Islamic commencing statements, a short chubby man of about fifty years old began talking to us about expectations, rules, and opportunities. After a twenty-minute non-sop talk, he finally took his seat. This time, a veiled woman came to the stand and listed the different places that we could visit to receive help with regards to any needs we have. She chattered more about how university life is supposed to be like. The more she spoke the more her words were becoming awfully familiar. “…you have to be autonomous and depend on yourselves. No one here is going to spoon-feed you everything like when you were in school. Your decisions should be made and implemented by you and only you. You should distinguish between what’s good and what’s bad for your own sake…”
The orientation finished after thirty more minutes of talks, directions, and advices. I walked out of the building and stood somewhere where I could see everything. Looking around me, I tried to figure out my head from my toes. I was scared and confused in the middle of tens of buildings not knowing where to go next. I let out a deep sigh of desperation and decided to follow my heart. I was on the move a while later.
Written by: Seira Ben-Ammar
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