GSU Blog Series: My Experiences, Freshmen Year

This is a series of blogs regarding Georgia Southern University, my alma mater. I attended GSU from the Fall of 2007 until May, 2012, when I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Information Technology. These blogs will reflect facts and opinions in regards to various things I experienced, saw, or heard of while at GSU. 

I'm not a credible news source, however I do check my facts before writing them down. Below the blog, I credit the conversations with people, if any, that played a hand in shaping the body of this blog. If you have any issues with what is being said, please feel free to contact me.

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I couldn’t exactly think of a way to carry on with this, but then I thought about it…. there’s no better way to share my experiences at Georgia Southern than to… well, just share them with the world. So we’ll see how many can fit into one blog.


Coming in as a Freshmen, my expectations of what college would be like were wide open. Because of the wide age gap between me and my sisters, I didn’t really turn to them to ask about their experiences. I figured I’d just go in, cold turkey, and keep my mind open. It helped that I was going to a college where no one, save a few people before me, had attended. This was during the craze where it was apparently every high school kid’s dream in Georgia to attend the University of Georgia…. That is, everyone but me had this dream. So when I was accepted into this small-town university in Statesboro, Georgia…. I was kind of elated.

The whole roommate thing was completely random. It had to be like that anyway, since the few people I DID know who were coming to Southern were all girls at the time. Mind you, it wasn’t until later that I found out about one guy who I knew that was going to Southern. Kind of a funny story too, considering he lived behind me in the subdivision. I wonder how Kyle’s doing these days….

Mostly though, I was excited about leaving home and getting out on my own, like most incoming Freshmen would be. I mean, who doesn’t like Freedom?




My Freshmen Year was DEFINITELY an experience to live for. First off, right from the get-go, I established myself as a complete an utter klutz to the Department of Music. One of my most infamous legacies was the time I fell into Lake Wells while riding my bike.

… Yes. I fell into Lake Wells while riding my bike to my 8am Music Theory I class.

Here’s the story:

So I liked to ride my bike everywhere… except for Band Practice. But for classes, it was unmistakable for me to be seen on my bike. On this particular day I was running a couple of minutes late to class, so I took a shortcut on the path that went through both the lakes. No big deal, I’ve taken this shortcut before.

Well on this day, there was a girl walking to the library, presumably to study or something. Well, she would walk on one side, then drift to the other side of the sidewalk, while talking on her cell phone. So I’m behind her, trying to figure out the best way around her. So when we approach the curve to cut to the library, I bolt for the grass to get around her. Well, at that moment, she moves to the left side, in the same direction I’m going.

Mind you, on either side of me is water. So when I hit the grass to try and go around… well, my bike slipped down the embankment and straight into the water… with me on it.

Apparently there was an audible scream by her, which I didn’t hear. Kinda what happens when your ears are full of water.

Of course she didn’t bother to help me out of the lake. She asked me if I was okay, then proceeded to keep walking to the library. So you see this klutzy Freshmen clambering out of the water, trying to get on the sidewalk. Lucky me, there was a maintenance guy not far away from me, and he helped me retrieve my hat (which was floating on the surface), along with some other things that had fallen out of my pockets. Some things though, like my GSU water bottle, are still laying at the bottom of Lake Wells. We also managed to get my bike out of the water too. I sit down, catch my breath, then freak out because I have a test in Music Theory.

So naturally, I hop on my bike, SOAKING wet, and ride to class, HOPING my teacher will let me take the test a bit later.

Side story: one of my classmates saw all this happen and knew it was me, and apparently took off to the classroom to let my professor know what had happened. But no one else in my class knew what happened (unless she told them, which I doubt, because)….

When I got to class (mind you, I’m leaving a water trail behind me), there was a distinct audible gasp that came from pretty much all of my classmates. I mean… soaking wet kid, looks like a wet rag, what would you say?

So I walk over to my professor, and simply say “I ran into a bit of a problem heading to class this morning.” I’m trying not to laugh, as is about half of my class. (Remember, we’re talking a test on this day.) I talk with my professor, and I ask if I can go home and change, and take the test later. I’ll leave out all the small details, but because I had a class at 9, and she was unwilling to let me retake it any other time…. I either had to get a ZERO on the test, or take the test while soaking wet in a cold classroom.

Obviously I took the test while soaking wet in a cold classroom. And surprisingly, I think I made an A or a B on that test too.

That story spread across all my friends and the entirety of the Department of Music within a span of a couple of hours. When I went to Band Practice later that day, people who didn’t know me were coming up to me asking if I was okay, or sharing the story amongst friends. And I found out that my future roommate (at the time) actually worked with the girl who ran me into the lake. She came into the library to work (well, there goes that studying theory), and was talking about how she ran some guy into the lake that morning. When he talked to me later, he put the two together.

Ever since then, it’s always been a running joke somewhere along the line involving me, a lake, and my bike. Needless to say, I haven’t ridden a bike in a long time… but not because of the lake though.

I think my Freshmen year was definitely an experience. A lot of the times, I’d find myself tripping over something, or falling down some stairs, or messing up my ankle, wrist, or knee because of something. There were quite a few different things I learned, mostly about myself though. It helped being at a school where the amount of people I knew coming in was relatively small. It forced me to open up a bit more, to get to know more people. Plus, the Department was very tight-knit; everyone knows everyone and everyone knows everyone else’s business. Kinda happens.

One thing I do wish sometimes I could change would have been my rooming situation. You see, I lived in a dorm, Johnson Hall, that was very…. antique. The rooms very tight, no sense of privacy, and I had a roommate that was very…. well, interesting. He was a cool guy, not too much to complain about… except for the trashiness on his side of the room, the milk he left in the mini-fridge for 5 months (I never used the mini-fridge so I never knew what was in it), his annoying-as-crap alarm clock he never knew how to turn off when he WASN’T in the room, the fact that he smoked… something…. And there was the fact of him bringing people into the room and not letting me know….

But overall he was a nice guy. The rest of it, I just dealt with…. by spending more time in my friends’ dorm rooms, and only sleeping in my room. Pretty sad when you have to make sure all your valuables are securely locked up in your room because your roommate loses his key and doesn’t tell you about it…. for TWO weeks. I mean, I lost my keys for 2 hours, but that was nothing.

Okay, I make him sound bad, but he really wasn’t that bad. My neighbor though…. That was an awkward situation. My roommate was gone for the weekend, so I wasn’t wearing my headphones like I usually was. All of a sudden, I started hearing a distinct squeaking noise… and it was happening, in a distinct rhythmic pattern. Then came the voices….

I’m sure you can figure out the rest.

It got so bad, even my roommate could hear it on his side of the room. Probably one of our only bonding moments as roommates was over the neighbor.

They tore down Johnson Hall, along with Winburn (where I spent 95% of my free time) and Olliff Halls to make way for Centennial Place, so my Freshmen Year memories are marked by a new parking lot (the footprint for Johnson turned into the parking lot for Centennial Place). I was sad to see it go, but let me tell you… I was happy I was out of there.

I did learn a great deal from my Freshmen Year. I learned that I didn’t know everything (no surprise there), and that I was fully capable of making friends on my own, and I didn’t need to follow anyone else around like a sick puppy. I came into myself more as a person, and I made a HUGE step towards becoming more of my true self toward the end of the Spring Semester.  While my grades weren’t exactly the best, I still did well. And I learned a lot about myself. That’s the important part.

Wow, so this was a lot longer than I thought. So, 5 parts of this it is. I’ll pick up my Sophomore Year (or, well, what I can remember from it) tomorrow. Be looking out for it.