When I first arrived at Point Park, the only thing that I could remember thinking was that this was a mistake. I did not belong here. All of a sudden, the months of anticipation and of wanting to be on campus quickly turned into a “get me out of here.” I can confidently say that my first day on campus at Point Park University was not a pleasant one.

I would say I have gotten into the swing of things now though. One thing that I think every college freshmen across the globe worries about is making friends, and everyone always does one way or another. For some reason I thought I was special, and there was no way I would. Then came my first surprise of college.

Almost immediately I was greeted with people in the same boat as me, and I quickly made a friend with someone in my bison bonding group. I see him every day, and he introduced me to more people whom I now consider some of my closest friends. Now that everyone has their own friend groups and we are over that honeymoon phase of our first semester, everyone is settling in, and it is making it a lot easier than I had imagined things would be from when I first pulled onto Wood Street.

Although for every positive outcome, there arises a couple more negative ones for me to deal with. Going into college, I thought it would be easy for me to get laundry done. I have done it at home, no big deal, right? Yeah, not for me. Some of you people reading this are most likely thinking something along the lines of “I have no trouble doing my laundry” or “He’s probably just lazy.”

I have come to find that doing laundry at a reasonable hour is harder for me than most would find it. Every time it seems that I may have time to throw clothes in the laundry, I kid you not, someone is always using the washer and dryer. Well Luke, why do you not just wait? Well, it is because almost every time I try to do laundry there is a line. To combat this, I have gone to other floors, stayed up way later than I should be staying up, or even bargained with people for spots in lines. When it comes to laundry, I am just straight up not having a good time.

Another issue I never thought I would have to deal with is the elevator lines, or even the elevators in general. My first day of classes at the West Penn building shocked me to say the least. I most certainly was not expecting a line of about 50 people that wrapped around the lobby to be the norm, and I can say with confidence now that I am nearing the mid-term portion of my first semester of college, that it is indeed the norm.

I have also noticed that the elevators tend to get stuck. It hasn’t happened to me yet, but I am sure it is not fun. But they add at least ten to 15 minutes onto your short commute from your dorm to class.

Despite these situationally trivial setbacks, I have loved almost every second I have spent on campus so far. Now that I have had some time to acclimate to downtown and college life, my opinion on Point Park has changed immensely from when I arrived in late August.

Point Park has evolved from a strange assortment of buildings crammed together, into a place where I am creating some of the best memories of my life, a place I can finally call my home.