By Victor Teng
The Head Orientation Counselors (HOCs) for the 2024 orientation, all personally responsible for the events described below. Bet they didn’t expect to be in The Tartan. Courtesy of Carnegie Mellon University
Editorials featured in the Forum section are solely the opinions of their individual authors.
Aug.18
Great, first official day of orientation. I looked at my phone and it said 6 a.m. Four hours of sleep in this luxurious twin-sized bed. I thought that I might as well get up and go for my morning run.
I changed into my workout clothes, did a few pushups, closed the door behind me, and jogged down a flight of stairs into the front foyer. As I pushed the front door open into the vivid, golden sky of absolute darkness, I took a deep breath of the fresh Pittsburgh air.
I had arrived at campus a day ago, two hours before my designated check-in. My first impressions? My dorm was exquisite. Donner House is an abandoned, blue swimming pool from the Cold War that just so happened to be a two-minute walk from CFA, and the very dorm nobody asked for.
How about the room? My surprise reduced-rate triple dorm could not be that bad, right? Thanks to the large incoming class this year, I happened to be in one of the very few rooms with air conditioning, and am fortunate enough to have two awesome roommates. Besides finding a used bra in the room, and being caught up in parent-roommate drama, the first day was rather unadventurous and forgettable. Certainly, I would have to get used to walking over to the communal bathroom for a shower with nothing but a towel.
After a lap around the campus and being drenched in rainwater, I returned to campus for breakfast. At 8 a.m., I saw hundreds of students gathered in line for possibly the food out of any college campus. As my turn came, I was served yellow mush with an egg-like texture, slime with the consistency of Greek yogurt, and orange juice-infused melted ice water. My food was so delicious that I took a single bite and donated it to the trash bin so the landfill mice could experience a truly gourmet meal. My roommate, Allen, appeared shocked and appalled. His face shriveled up like a raisin. He clearly enjoyed the breakfast.
An hour passed and we all lined up for the President’s speech. Without a ticket, I cleverly snuck behind a few tall individuals and made my way into a seat in the back along with Allen. President Farnam Jahanian’s address was so awe-inspiring that I saw a lady fast asleep beside me and a fellow student playing “Brawl Stars” in the row in front of me. I managed to smuggle a banana into the tent and enjoyed my potassium while I listened to the speeches.
My first architecture orientation was held thirty minutes after. As I made my way to the Cohon University Center, I sat alone in the back waiting for my mom and Allen to join me. There, I saw dozens of other architecture kids twenty times smarter than I was filling the room. As my mom finally joined me, I sat down and listened to the speeches of my future professors. Then, I heard the words “Your turn. Everybody stand up one by one and tell me why you want to study architecture.”
Oh my god. I started panicking. I had to stand up and make a speech in front of 100 other people. My social anxiety prohibits me from making eye contact let alone making an improvised speech. As I anxiously watched each kid stand up and begin talking, I accepted my fate and took a few deep exhales as my friend next to me began to talk about sustainable architecture. As my turn was next, my mother flicked on her camera and began recording me. Thanks a lot, Mom, you are about to bear witness to a diabolical speech on why I love Frank Lloyd Wright.
Time skip to Aug. 19
Great, Donner orientation. It was 9 a.m. and I was sleep-deprived while my social battery was on overdrive. What did I do last night? I played video games until the sky gradually turned from black to a bright orange. When I left the auditorium at Cohon yesterday, I felt the glares of loads of angry architecture students for wasting their time, and an angry Frank Lloyd Wright in heaven reprimanding me for including his name in my silly speech. What an experience. Now making my way into Tepper with my trusted Americano in my hand, I sat beside Allen and a stranger in the second row of a large auditorium.
“What’s up, man?”
I looked to my left and saw a confused Allen. I turned to my right and saw the stranger greeting me. He looked kind. He wore glasses. I liked his Star Wars shirt. He seemed funny. Goodness gracious, would he be the first non-roommate friend I will make in Carnegie Mellon? Short answer — yes. One hour or so later after orientation, my roommates and I conscripted him to help us refurbish our room and take the bunk bed apart. If you’re reading this, Sami you’re a real one. I love you, bro T.S.
Minutes passed and minutes turned into an hour. This informative, insightful dorm orientation taught me the skill of sleeping with my eyes open. At last, our first activity…was bingo. We were to write down cool things about ourselves and walk around the room to find others with the same ones. This is terrible, more talking? It would take another couple of hours for me to recharge and be able to put a coherent sentence together. Allen, Sami, and I devised an ingenious plan to win some candy. I guess the time was finally calling for me to display my intriguing personality: I am from Canada; I like sleeping; my hair color is black; I play an instrument; I like juice. Allen is from Canada, Sami likes sleeping: despite how awfully broad my Bingo card was, I completed the bingo after at least fifty others and Allen barely managed to win a candy. As I lamented my failure, we were dismissed as we headed off for lunch.
Now, a lunch review. I had very high expectations for lunch given that breakfast was undoubtedly the best meal I have ever had. To this day, I vividly recall the mouthwatering flavors that almost made me vomit. However, these wonderful flavor explosions came nowhere near the tantalizing lunch I was about to eat.
If Gordon Ramsay is regarded as the greatest chef in the world, in comparison to the head chef at Carnegie Mellon, he is no more than a sous chef at your local McDonald’s. The head chef at Carnegie Mellon cooked up the food of the Heavens, producing such profound flavors that brought me to my knees. The Michelin Guide would have to invent a new rating system to justify putting this food on their reviews. Remy from Ratatouille would evolve into Splinter from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, gaining Thanos-like powers after eating this meal. Starting from the plating: My goodness, I had never seen such avante-garde technique where the food extends off the plastic plate. The chef put their heart and soul into perfecting this three-course dish: as an appetizer, cold white grains with brown stuff and a red thing that masterfully resembles the texture of sand and mimics the taste of dirt. I never thought my palette could taste the Earth to this extent, as the irresistibly powerful flavor of fertilizer filled my mouth. Now for the mysterious green thing: a green blob of fake wrap drenched in bizarre yellow-colored liquid that tastes awfully like alcohol wipes. Not to mention the inside contained strips of meat which made me question what diet that animal was on. Finally, the sandwich had reached maximum levels of flavor and evolved into a sentient being that almost flew off the plate. Such an exquisite masterpiece of a sandwich was a journey in itself: I tasted the ice of Gordon’s Food Service’s refrigeration system from the turkey and the plastic packaging of where the bread came from. Never did I think this experience would invoke such profound emotions to the point I had to spit out the food given the intensity of the flavor. I was simply not worthy enough to eat such a meal. It was the epitome of perfection.
As I returned to Tepper an hour later, still shedding tears of sorrow for my body as it declined the meal, the long-awaited orientation session began: chants. Beside me were my fellow peers, still flabbergasted by the intensity of today’s lunch, mentally preparing themselves for the sheer monstrosity of the chant we were about to learn. Before me, I saw rows of Donner die-hards chanting war cries and dancing in sync. The intensity was unmatched, and two minutes later, I was joined by my fellow dorm-mates dancing in sync and shouting war cries. Allen, a man who I’ve known for more than four years, had his entire personality changed after this moment; his nonchalant demeanor had magically been erased. This man could not stop saying, “yeah Donnerrrrr” at every possible moment in the most disturbing voice possible.
As I distanced myself from his quirkiness, I realized that it was finally dinnertime. I could not wait to experience the delightful flavors of Carnegie Mellon’s culinary masterpiece. However this time, I simply could not eat the meal before me: I had to use all my strength and willpower to withhold myself from tasting the flavors that will take me to heaven. Instead, I retreated to my dorm and opened my laptop. At last, inner peace. I logged into the Wi-Fi and did an internet speed test. 400-megabyte download speeds. I almost suffered a heart attack. I whipped out my phone from my pocket and sent 10 of my high school friends this amalgamation of a Wi-Fi speed. Was I in the Google headquarters or was I living in a NASA mission control desk? I instantly launched “Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege,” queued into a match, and proceeded to play until past midnight.
Carnegie Mellon orientation was great. It was so great, in fact, that my sarcasm has reached new heights of sarcasm. If any incoming first-year is reading this, take my word for it: Attend your orientation sessions. They are fun, you’ll meet cool people like Sami who will help you take apart your bunk bed and play “Brawl Stars” with you at 3 a.m. The food here is incredible, you will never forget your first few meals and they will pay you a visit in your dreams. You will learn peculiar chants that will hypnotize your roommate and change his identity. As the clock finally hit 4 a.m., and the three cans of Monster Energy wore off, I closed “Brawl Stars,” plugged in my phone to the charger, turned the lights off, and drifted off to sleep knowing a new adventure awaited me tomorrow.