Freshmen orientation, or "Fish Camp," may seem unnecessary, but it is actually a great way to dive into your first year at college. Even if you are attending a college close to home and do not plan on spending extraneous time on campus during your educational career, you should still go to Fish Camp because it can positively shape the rest of your university experience.
Fish Camp invites all incoming freshmen students to convene on school grounds and learn about everything that university life has to offer. This includes seminars on the procedure for registering for classes, housing lotteries, signing up for clubs and other extracurricular activities, college traditions, and many other topics. Some schools also extend the Fish Camp invitation to new transfer students as well because transfer students are, in many ways, similar to freshmen in that they must be informed of all of the resources that are available at the school. Freshmen orientation typically works by breaking up the large freshmen student body into smaller, more manageable groups. Each of these groups will follow an orientation leader, who is oftentimes an upperclassman who has been with the university for several years. This is a great opportunity for freshmen to ask the orientation leader questions about meal plans, housing, sororities, fraternities, parking, and about college life in general and hear the answers from someone who actually attends the school rather than from a faculty member.
Many Fish Camps also allow students to take care of some important tasks during the orientation as well, such as taking student ID photographs, registering for classes, meeting with academic counselors to set up a rough four-year-plan, and signing up for parking permits. All of these are things that a freshman would not have to deal with once classes begin, which is a huge time saver. So aside from getting insider information from the mouths of current students, those who attend Fish Camp will also get to take care of university-related responsibilities before classes even begin.
Finally, one of the best reasons to go to Fish Camp is to socialize and mingle with your peers. College campuses are huge, and freshmen classes are typically packed to the gills as well. This can make freshmen feel rather anonymous because the crowds are far too large for intimate conversation exchange. Going to Fish Camp is a great way to get to know your peers on a smaller scale and establish friendly relationships so that you will at least have a few companions when you join the sea of freshmen on the first day of classes.
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