Tag Archives: unofficial orientation 2021

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Unofficial Orientation 2021: Official Orientation 101

 

This is part of our 2021 Unofficial Orientation Series. A quick reminder that you can check out the welcome post here and past years’ series here.

Congratulations! You’ve made it through unofficial orientation with a little help from your friends here at Wesleying. You’re one step closer to evolving from a pre-frosh to a frosh! Now, for your final challenge before you are officially Wesleyan students: ~Official Orientation~

Orientation is a wild time. There are the parties you hear about people going to, but have no idea how to find. There are those first awkward meals with your hallmates/roommates. There are the nights when you curl up in bed with a picture of your best friends from high school and wonder why you didn’t just follow them to college.

Our goal today is to teach you (nearly) everything you need to know in order to make the most out of your orientation experience!

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Unofficial Orientation 2021: Drop/Add Tips and Tricks

This is part of our 2021 Unofficial Orientation Series. A quick reminder that you can check out the welcome post here and past years’ series here.

Disclaimer: While the tips introduced in this post can be applied universally, you should remember that your odds of getting into a class depend primarily not on your effort, but on the professor’s policies and how popular the class is (and, also, maybe how lucky you are). It’s pretty much impossible to convince a professor of an extremely popular class who simply won’t go over the limit to accept you into their class, even if you do absolutely everything right. But, trying can’t hurt, right?

Hello, and welcome to today’s episode of Unofficial Orientation. The focus of today’s episode will be mainly on the devil known as drop/add. If you don’t know what that is (seriously, how do you not know what that is yet?), the folks at the registrar’s office have provided this overview. During this period, students are able to add or drop pretty much any class to their schedule, regardless of the limits posed by pre-reg (however, your faculty advisor will have to approve an extension in your credit limit if you go above 4 credits). I also highly recommend you check out this FAQ, also kindly prepared by the registrar’s office, as a way to get the basics down before proceeding. This post will not be doing much explaining of Drop/Add itself. It will, however, try to warn you, innocent, unassuming frosh, about the reality of this brutal race and offer some insights (read: randomly gathered knowledge that may have been the results of embarrassing behaviors of the author (and past authors)).

If reading long articles is not your thing, scroll down to the bottom for a TL;DR.

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Unofficial Orientation 2021: First Year Classes

This is an update of un meli-melo’s post which was an update of Jackson‘s post from 2015, which was an update of skorn‘s post from 2014. Which was an update of DaPope‘s post from 2013. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, or some shit like that, right?

 

This is part of our 2021 Unofficial Orientation Series. A quick reminder that you can check out the welcome post here and past years’ series here.

Take a nice deep breath in, at this point you’re either on-campus or just days away.  The excitement is tangible, new campus, new room, new people.  Before you get too wrapped up in your new freedom let’s talk about the real excitement: Your courses, the splendid garden that is Wesmaps, and what this year might be like academically.

I myself remember being confused by the process of choosing and then actually signing up for that class during my first semester so hopefully, this post provides a little clarity in the whole subject (and not the opposite).  Worst comes to worst just remember that most first-year classes are fairly big and your chances of getting into them are pretty high.

On that happy note, let’s dive right into this abyss!

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Unofficial Orientation 2021: Student Groups

This is an update of a repost of a repost of wilk‘s update of michelle‘s update of Maya‘s 2015 post, which was an update of alt‘s 2014 post, which was an update of Q‘s 2013 post, which was an update of Syed‘s 2012 post. 

This is our annual student activities fair, where you can schmooze, or more likely, be schmoozed, to your heart’s content

This is part of our 2021 Unofficial Orientation Series. A quick reminder that you can check out the welcome post here and past years’ series here.

By the time classes start, you’ll likely be successfully moved into your dorm, blissfully free from your parents, and finally finding the time to figure your shit out. Soon, you’ll realize that you have a little too much time on your hands — and you might want to fill that time with Organized Social Activities.

Thankfully for you, there are about 300 student groups at Wesleyan, so you have many, many options. Joining student groups is one of the best way to meet people outside of your dorm and in different class years. You could find best friends! Mentors! Something new about yourself! It’s all up to you.

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Unofficial Orientation 2021: WesAdmits Culture

This is part of our 2021 Unofficial Orientation Series. A quick reminder that you can check out the welcome post here and past years’ series here.

Somewhere between the invention of Facebook and right this second came the very first WesAdmits. You’re likely already familiar with WesAdmits 2025 – it’s the Facebook group you got added to with your acceptance and where you learned that every single admitted student ever just happens to like both chill nights in and fun nights out. After the introductory formalities in the spring, WesAdmits opens up to the rest of Wes’s student body and becomes a main forum for student communication – lost WesIDs, student plays, club sign ups, abstract questions, polemic debate – you’ll find it all in WesAdmits. Shit goes down in WesAdmits. Here are some of our tips and tricks for learning your way around the forum:

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Unofficial Orientation 2021: Middletown Eating

This is an updated repost of michelle’s repost of sophie’s repost of maya‘s repost. Please note: this is by no means an exhaustive list of eating options in Middletown, as this perfunctory Yelp search will show you. Feel free to add your own recommendations in the comments! 

This is part of our 2021 Unofficial Orientation Series. A quick reminder that you can check out the welcome post here and past years’ series here.

Middletown has so many fantastic dining options that at first you might feel like this turtle: faced with an almost insurmountable mountain of deliciousness. Much like the above turtle, though, you’ve got to start somewhere. We’re here to give you a head start.

From coffee-shop casual to awkward-family-dinner upscale, there’s food in Middletown for every occasion. This is our guide to some of the best places to eat in town.  Prices are on a $ to $$$ scale. Also worth noting is that a lot of Middletown restaurants accept Middletown Cash, so save up some of that laundry money for your dining excursions. Wesleyan also provides a nifty guide to restaurants in and around Middletown, if you need more guidance (though theirs doesn’t come with student feedback and that special Wesleying flair)! Read all of our food list after the jump!

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Unofficial Orientation 2021: Eating and Drinking Things at Wes

This post is an updated version of Sam’s update which was an updated version of wilk’s Eating and Drinking orientation article.

This is part of our 2021 Unofficial Orientation Series. A quick reminder that you can check out the welcome post here and past years’ series here.

Eating and drinking is a necessity for all living beings, even during your hazy college days. While we all have to adjust our food standards from delicious home-cooked meals to university food, trust me, it could be worse. This year Wesleyan is ranked #15(we were demoted from #7, sad) in college food on Niche out of all the colleges in the U.S. so you know it’s going to be good. Wes has many options for dining that you can enjoy regardless of your dietary orientation. We’re even ranked #2 by One Green Planet for Most Vegan-Friendly Colleges. There’s a plethora of awesome vegan food and our friends at the Mongolian Grill are always willing to cook up a chicken tortilla topped with cheese if it’s protein that you want.

This is the part of the orientation series where we remind you to eat your veggies.

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Unofficial Orientation 2021: Middletown Outings

This is an update of Meli’s update of wilk‘s update of his previous post!

This is part of our 2021 Unofficial Orientation Series. A quick reminder that you can check out the welcome post here and past years’ series here.

Toto, we’re not in Bushwick anymore. You’ve now left the comfort of deep Brooklyn, as they call it, for the not-so-dissimilar milieu of Wesleyan. Just kidding, a vast majority of Weskids are from not-Brooklyn, not-LA, and not-Bay-Area, although it might seem otherwise.

For all of you from those (wonderful) places, and all of you from other places, Middletown is different than those places (shocking!). It was once the largest city in Connecticut, circa pre-war-of-1812. Can your hometown claim that title? Nah. Unless you’re from Middletown, in which case you are probably way more qualified than me to write this post.

While Wesleyan is fine and there is usually never a shortage of things to do on campus, Middletown and the surrounding area truly have some wonderful gems that are worth knowing about as you settle in and look for things to do other than vape on Foss.

And if you’re really bold and somehow have an abundance of time before finals arrive, there’s some cool shit beyond the local area too. Here’s our 2021 Outing guide!

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Unofficial Orientation 2021: Wes Music Scene

This is an update of hen’s coronavirus update of fern’s update of un meli-melo’s update of wilk‘s update of Maya‘s update of their post from 2015. Q wrote about this in 2013 and 2014. Some things have changed, but the scene here is still ‘unique, zealous, and sweaty.’

This is part of our 2021 Unofficial Orientation Series. A quick reminder that you can check out the welcome post here and past years’ series here.

The more I talk to college kids at other schools, the more I realize how much the music scene at Wesleyan sets itself apart. Though we have them, we are not confined to house parties and bars — there’s music nearly every day, all week. Often, there’s so much music that you can’t possibly go to it all, but you try anyway.

Many student bands have gone on to greater things, like Overcoats, Heems (Himanshu Suri ’07) of Das Racist (Suri and Victor Vasquez ’06), Novelty Daughter, Amanda Palmer ’98, the Rooks, Henry Hall ’14 of Grand Cousin (RIP), AND MORE. It’s very special. What’s even better is that 95% of this stuff is totally free.

Right now large gatherings are still up in the air, but last year proves that Wes’ music can exist even in the era of social distancing. There were plenty of outdoor and virtual concerts the past two semesters, and that will surely continue this fall. Hopefully in the semesters to come the music scene will return even more to normal, so if you want to hype yourself up for that, read under the cut.

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Unofficial Orientation 2021: Queer Life

This is a repost of an updated version of Sam’s update of his 2016 article, because “heterenormativity is [still] killing this country.”

 

Taken from the 2017 Showtunes Sideways performance. Showtunes Sideways is a musical cabaret that opens up a space for those to perform roles in songs from musicals which they wouldn’t traditionally be cast in. PC Maia Nelles Sager ’17

This is part of our 2021 Unofficial Orientation Series. A quick reminder that you can check out the welcome post here and past years’ series here.

Hello, sweet sweet children! This post is here for all of my children of the rainbow to get a sense of what it is like to be a Queer identifying person on campus. This is a revamped version of the post I wrote last year (which you can find ~here~). Now that I’ve gotten a bit more experience under my belt at Wes (I’m going to be a Junior. Ik. I’m so old), I thought it was fair to update my general feeling on The Community™ at Wes. On top of my general experiences, this post will also contain some resources that are here for all LGBTQIA+ bbys.

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