Alpha

Many should understand what alpha represents. Alpha is the first letter in the Greek alphabet and it represents the beginning. Indeed, today was the beginning of our time within Brown University itself. Transitioning from visiting colleges to taking classes will certainly be quite a difference. 

Our day began fairly late compared to the other days. We started off with breakfast before Nate took us to Brown. Checking in was a very smooth process; we gave our names to staff, got some stamps on our hands for temporary verification, and went into Sayles Hall to gather a few items. We were handed two envelopes and a lanyard; one envelope contained a short letter detailing the location and such about our classes, and the other contained a contact card, an ID card, and a key for our dorm rooms.

We then went to our dorms; the Brown I cohort seems rather divided to me. I settled into my room fairly quickly and began setting things up, such as the internet connection (doing that early proved very useful!). My roommate, Ian, came in shortly after me; he's certainly an amiable and reasonable guy. 

As soon as I finished setting up a few important things, I tried to catch a tour, but I only caught its ending. I then moved onward to one of the orientations, which consisted of some obvious information. After, I went  to the next orientation for students that would be staying for three weeks. Much of the information there was repeated from last time, though there were some additional things about co-curricular activities. 

The orientation ended with a meetup with our Residential Advisors; our RA, Russyan, is a very relaxed guy. During this meetup consisting of most of the people on my floor of the dorm, we played some games to try to get to know each other. We then had dinner together. 

The next event after dinner was an ice cream social, for the students of Summer@Brown to get to know each other. I found myself in a group of people that I did not know at all, contrary to the beginning where I met up with two other ILCers to get comfortable at the event. This group left to get some water at someone's dorm, and that resulted in us settling in that dorm for a decent amount of time to just relax and chat. 

We left at 8:45; I surprisingly found myself on the first floor of my dorm. We had entered through another door that I did not recognize, so I thought I entered another dorm. I headed straight up to my own dorm to prepare for the meeting with the RA. We had some more greetings before the RA went over information and our restrictions.