I was accepted by Smith College with a caveat — I would have to matriculate in January. Initially, I was too excited about my acceptance to read beyond “Congratulations!” It was only when I examined the letter more carefully that I noticed the minor hitch. At the time, I never pictured myself taking any time off from school between high school and college. I was passionate about my studies and thrived off of routine. None of my interests were conducive to taking time off, and the few friends I had who took gap years traveled or completed research, both of which seemed unappealing. But the allure of Smith proved too much to resist, so I agreed to postpone my college experience until January.
I am now a month-and-a-half into my time here and not confident that I would recommend a January start to future students. I want to preface any grievances with the disclaimer that students, professors and administrators alike have been consistently welcoming and friendly. They have directed me to academic buildings and dining halls and explained that yes, you do, in fact, need to place your Campus Café order at exactly 7:00 p.m. None of the issues I have with the January start are specific to Smith or to its community. The inherent difficulties of a later start date (albeit one to which I agreed), exacerbated by the academic disruption from the pandemic, created an exceedingly difficult first month of college.
I experienced Convocation through Instagram photos of my peers’ smiling faces and Big Sib/Little Sib reveals the same way. At the time, I was unaware that when I arrived on campus, there would be no big sib awaiting me. This incident feels emblematic of the larger oversights that have defined the January transition. The support systems and acclimation activities designed to ease the transition for September-start first years aren’t always carried over for the students starting in January. I feel this loss. and it was certainly worsened by starting in the throes of another COVID-19 surge. Though neither Smith nor myself could have predicted this, online orientation was not ideal for anyone. There is also only so much administrators can do to mitigate the fact that other first years have had an entire semester to establish friend groups. But the expectation that January students would be able to seamlessly transition into an existing ecosystem without the guardrails afforded to September-start students is unrealistic.
I found out where I was living (and with whom I was living) on a Sunday and moved in on that Thursday. While some ’26J students were paired together as roommates, others, myself included, were assigned to ’25 roommates. The lack of cohesive policy on rooming deepened the difficulties of an already strenuous transition. While our orientation program familiarized us with campus staples like the Jacobson Center and Lazarus Center, it feels like an unbeatable feat to catch up with the ’25 students. There was no student organization fair for us; instead, the advice we were given in regards to joining clubs was to peruse the Social Network. In office hours with a professor, I mentioned in passing that the paper we were discussing was my first of college. He was confused—he hadn’t even heard there were students starting in January. The understanding that the first year adjustment requires time didn’t apply to us.
We were repeatedly told that the January start at Smith is new; my friends and I joke that we are the “guinea pig” year. All things considered, I am appreciative that efforts were made in an attempt to ensure our comfort. But the material conditions of starting halfway through the year aren’t always in line with the hypotheticals conceived by administrators detached from the realities of the transition. Perhaps a Big Sib would ease this burden, perhaps it wouldn’t. It doesn’t hurt to try.
