First day of classes leaves freshmen unscathed

UNC freshman Aaron Harrill wasn’t expecting a party Tuesday when he walked through the Pit on his first day of classes.

“It was a lot of people — a little overwhelming,” he says. “I wasn’t expecting the music.”

Harrill was one of the thousands of increasingly ambitious, qualified Carolina freshmen winding their way through the Tuesday humidity.

The sight of freshmen studying maps and shouldering massive backpacks was common on campus as the University’s newest additions experienced their first full academic day.

Abbas Rattani, another member of the class of 2009, vowed to go to bed at 6 p.m. Monday evening to be well-rested for his first day, but says he was distracted by his suitemates until after midnight.

But after his classes, Rattani wasn’t exactly lacking energy. He carried the books for all of his classes — even the ones he didn’t have Tuesday — because he was so excited about the start of school.

Rattani, who plans to double-major in religious studies and physics, has classes from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He says he is taking so many hours in an effort to eliminate his required perspectives so that he can study in Iran.

Although he had been scared of taking Economics 10, it turned out to have only 40 people, and he says he liked the professor.

“The guy was laid-back and easy to follow,” Rattani says.

And Rattani says he thinks he’s going to like his English class. He says his professor, in an attempt to curb class disturbances, told the class, “If my cell phone rings in class, you guys are dismissed.”

Rattani says he tried to get the professor’s number but nobody had it. The professor let the class out early anyway.

Raleigh native Eric Sim, one of Rattani’s distracting suitemates and a fellow freshman, says he knows time management will be the hardest adjustment to college life.

“It’s tough, but I’m getting used to it,” says Sim, who plans to play ice hockey and to study in Japan next year.

Despite his desire to study in the Far East, Sim says that as an Asian-American, he’s looking for a new social scene, something apart from his high-school friends.

“I’m trying to branch away from the Asian group — I’m trying to integrate.”

Before class, he circled his class buildings on the map and even had people approach him to share his campus diagram.

His planning had some holes, however; he ended up going to the Hanes Art Center for no reason because he thought that it was Monday.

Freshman Abby Keiper had more problems with her anthropology class itself than with locating the classroom.

That class and her women’s studies class were both 300-person lectures, something Keiper says will take some getting used to, in addition to the increased workload.

“I’m trying to expect them to be harder so I’ll work harder but I don’t know if they will be,” says Keiper, who plans on majoring in psychology.

Rob Stephens’ first class was an honors communications class in performance studies.

He says he was pleased with the professor, as well as with the class size.

“The class is going to be different than anything I’ve been a part of,” Stephens says. “It’s what you make it and what the other people bring to it.”

His first year seminar, called “Defining Blackness: National and International Approaches to African-American Identity,” was especially stimulating to Stephens, who says he’s always been interested in race relations.

Meanwhile, Sim and Rattani, both professed hip-hop music fans, found time on their first academic day to buy the new Kanye West album, coincidentally titled “Late Registration.”

On the album, which Sim played on his iPod as he walked through campus, West reflects on his experience as a college dropout.

Music aside, dropping out is the furthest thing from these first-year students’ minds.

 

Contact the Features Editor at features@unc.edu.