Welcome to Brandeis, an organized mess of bright-green shirts, pocket schedules jammed with activities and incessant introductory speakers. Here are some basic guidelines for our four-day orientation: Shake hands with the person whose name you'll forget in less than two minutes; find the myriad buildings named for those Jewish philanthropists whose names have begun to sound identical; meet your AIDE group every other hour and conveniently use up a week's worth of meals in the span of three days; hear every professor, orientation leader, and even outside speaker repeat over and over, "Welcome to Brandeis."It's sort of like life. Let's be honest. Orientation is awkward. It shoves hundreds of new people and concepts in your face and forces you to deal with everything all at once. Overwhelming? Certainly. But as in life, we are provided with a foundation, a sort of family, if you will. An orientation group and leaders are there to help us find a comfort zone within the larger maelstrom of orientation week.

But of course, no family is complete without its fights. In our little AIDE group families, fights are picked constantly. The notorious battle cry that is commonly heard around campus, loud and profound, echoes in our ears. But as we've all witnessed, the true purpose of these seemingly vicious family feuds is really just to, you know, "break the ice." I don't think anyone really wants to chop us down like trees-we're just learning how to make eye contact. That's one life lesson learned from orientation.

Loving and responsible parents, or orientation leaders, as they like to be called, guided us through the heavily programmed week. Their devotion to their groups was infallible. They provided us with edible food and educated us about the differences between Sherman and Usdan. They gave us "the Talk" on drugs and alcohol, just like parents, albeit with a few college-level modifications. They introduced us to our new campus home, the resources of our school and the infamous Brandeis tradition of introducing everyone to everything. In this way, OLs shaped our understanding of Brandeis University as a place to love learning, meet new people and never, ever have a dull moment.

Not only did orientation expose us to much of what Brandeis has to offer through presentations and fairs; not only did it educate us with brilliant guest speakers; it also helped us first-years to discover our comfort zones in this immense, unusual, over-programmed institution. So, fellow first-years, congratulations on surviving your first week of college. Now you can finally experience the freedom to manage your own schedule!