By: Natalie May Sioco
Before stepping foot inside Silliman University (SU), most students have already heard a thing or two about it. Spend enough time lurking through SU’s subreddit and down to every crook and cranny of the internet and you’ll quickly come across the same suspects over and over again: the tales of the old architecture, acacia trees, Hibalag Booth Festival, cheese bread, you name it.
Only some stories can only take you so far. Eventually, every freshman has to trade online discussions for the real thing, and for many, that starts at the freshie walk.
As per tradition, the event starts with a walk grouped according to respective colleges, then comes the first part of the event—–the chants. No one really warns you about how one minute you are standing right next to a stranger, and the next minute you’re both passionately yelling the same college chant.
It feels foreign at first, the words are new and slightly off-beat, and maybe half the crowd is scrambling to perfect a chant they only learned minutes ago. Though give it a few, and suddenly you would mistake the crowd for a bunch of fourth-year students who have been honoring their college for years now.
By the time the chants begin to die down, freshmen are ushered towards the Amphitheater. A few formal speeches are addressed, but somewhere in the middle of formalities come the side comments packed with inside jokes.
At this point, being a freshie can feel like being handed references with no context and just hoping for an explanation later. In a nutshell, there is still a lot to be learnt about Silliman. A few inside jokes later, your attention starts drifting elsewhere. Maybe it’s the growing humidity, maybe it’s the lack of personal space, but either way, you can’t help but look around.
Just like that, the Freshie walk starts to feel like a live exhibit of every type of freshmen imaginable. Look to your left and there’s a pair of students having their own personal TED Talk. Then to your right is a group that clearly did not meet today. They arrived together, walked together, and sat together.
Watching them is enough to make any solo freshie consider texting a stranger. A social butterfly in full operation, which within the span of the event somehow gathered a collection of friends from different college departments.
Just when you’ve seen it all, here comes a freshman who is suspiciously too knowledgeable. Best believe they could decode that for you: they can name buildings, map the campus, memorize the chants, and tell you all about Silliman stories.
Just for them to reveal later on that they had either an alumni tell them everything or went a bit too much down the rabbit hole of Silliman.
Everywhere you look is a different kind of freshman, each arriving with their own stories, personalities, and expectations.
As the event begins winding down, a group of students gathers at the front and starts leading a series of popular dances, engaging their fellow Sillimanians to join in. One song turns into another until the crowd arrives at the grand finale: the iconic “Girl in the Mirror” zumba
Right at that moment, all the confusion and going with the flow that defined the day starts feeling oddly reassuring. In a place filled with so many foreign ideas, there is finally something everybody recognizes. A shared point of reference that feels a lot like belonging disguised as a dance.
Looking around, it now seems clear on how many freshmen felt energized by the event. Some were busy making friends, while others simply took in their surroundings.From that point on, one could simply start to confirm those stories they have heard and researched. You get to walk underneath the same acacia trees the Seniors raved about, pass the landmarks you often see online, and spend hours surrounded by what alumni claim to be friendly Sillimanians, and maybe even join the group of people who romanticize the “slow-paced life” of Silliman.
The reality of becoming a freshman in college starts settling in. Those unfamiliar hallways, confusing schedules, complicated room assignments, and moments that feel as if everyone knows something you don’t. All in all, college has always had this scary nature of firsts.
In those few hours of Freshie Walk, what were once only stories you see online are now something you are now a part of—from the people to its rich history that you are now part of. In every freshmen journey marks the end of an introduction to the campus and the beginning of becoming part of it.
