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By Claire Reinthaler

For the Clemmons Courier

While for some, July is the month for vacations and summer memories, for many rising college freshmen like myself, July is a time for endless college information and preparation.

All of this is very good and normal, of course, but that doesn’t mean there is not a great deal of pressure that comes with all these changes.

As someone who will be attending The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a large state school, this has, so far, often meant a great deal of competition for basic college necessities like housing and classes.

In this day and age, social media makes connecting with future classmates easier than ever, but this is often, I’ve found, a double-edged sword. I reached out to dozens of people, trying to connect and search for a potential roommate, but all this work proved fruitless. The problem is that on social media, so many people are afraid of actually talking about themselves beyond the surface level, so it’s incredibly difficult to identify people you’ll truly connect with. In the end, I opted to go random for my roommate, prioritizing which dorm I wanted to live in rather than who I was living with.

When I was notified that I had been put on the waitlist for housing, it felt like a world of uncertainty had just opened up in front of me. Not knowing when I would receive my housing assignment for the fall was certainly more than a little daunting. I wish I could’ve told myself a month ago that it would all work out, though, because by the end of June, I had received my housing assignment to my first choice dorm, Cobb Hall on North Campus.

Registration, however, has been an entirely different beast so far. The website that Chapel Hill uses for registration as well as numerous other school-related functions, called ConnectCarolina looks prehistoric and works just about as well as it looks like it does. And with everyone in each assigned registration block trying to register at the exact same time, well, you get the picture. As someone for whom change and uncertainty can be quite anxiety-inducing, the likelihood of not getting the classes I want being high is more than a little frightening. But I know that this is all part of the process and that once open registration hits in early August, any unwanted classes will be able to be swapped for more favorable ones.

In the end, I know these changes are all going to result in positive things, and that it will all be worth it to enjoy these next four years.