Moving In

Today was the first day we got to sleep in. I got nine glorious hours of sleep. We casually packed all of our things and checked out of the hotel. Last night’s waitress at the restaurant we attended suggested that we eat at this famous spot in Nashville called the Pancake Pantry. She warned us that there would probably be a line, but little did we know that the line would stretch around the corner of the eatery. We ended up choosing to go to IHOP instead, where I filled up on French toast and many breakfast sides.

We had a few hours before check-in time at Vanderbilt, so we went to Walmart and bought the extra stuff we either forgot or needed more of for our dorm rooms. With still a couple more hours to kill, we drove meanderingly through the suburbs and downtown Nashville. We witnessed a march proceeding through the streets of advocators of an end to genocide of the Nuba people.

Check in was quicker than I expected. There were only five stops, which included getting our name tag, meal card, key, and filling out a few forms. We found our dorm room assignment as well. I am on the same floor as Julia, right across the hall. My roommate is from Texas, and I can tell we will have a lot of stories to share in the future.

The dorm rooms are surprisingly spacious. We each get a bed, a closet, a desk, and two small bedside dressers. Each room can control their own A/C level, which I am very grateful for. Nashville is not as muggy as Atlanta, but still very hot.

The proctor leader of my side of the dorm floors is bubbly and comical. She is easy to talk to and very friendly. There are 12 girls total in our group, including both Julia and I, and we are part of V-House. Kye is on a different floor and part of a different house as well.

We went on a tour through our campus boundaries. The campus is so beautiful. The buildings and the fields are great and spacious, and there are so many trees. There are also a lot of squirrels on campus. Our proctor joked that instead of a teacher to student ratio, there is a squirrel to student ratio which is like 6:1. As I mentioned before, it is very hot here, and we had to end the tour early to escape the heat.

Dorm food is not actually that bad. People always say dorm food is mediocre, but I think it’s actually quite nice. There is a lot of variety, and plenty of desserts. We had a delicious meal of spaghetti and garlic bread, as well as a salad, cake, and snow cones.

The next item on the agenda was the activities section. All VSA students congregated in a building where the proctors performed skits to strike up house pride. They also played a game skit based on the TV show “Next”, which is a dating show; except in this performance, they used disobeying of house rules as reasons for the bachelor or bachelorette to “next” the suitors.

Our second to last agenda item was a game kind of like steal the bacon. All of the houses (V, S, and A, get it?) compete against each other. A proctor would yell things like, “someone with red hair”, “a double jointed person”, “someone who can recite the most digits of pie”, “four people with the same shoe size”, and “someone who can crabwalk all the way over there”, and the kids who qualify would run as fast as they can to the center of the field. Every time we scored a point, we would chant “WHAT HOUSE??” “V-HOUSE!!” It was an incredible amount of fun, and I believe our house won.

Before we went to sleep, we had a group meeting with our proctor to go over our agenda for tomorrow and house rules as well. She also passed out VSA t-shirts with the name V HOUSE on the back. Go house pride!

Tomorrow we start our class. World Religions, here I come.