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Going off to college was an intimidating experience. For the first time, I was living away from home. I was in a dorm suite with seven guys I didn’t know. My best friend pledged at one of the fraternities, so we didn’t see much of each other during that first week. It could have been one of the worst experiences of my life.

I arrived on campus my freshman year and settled in to my dorm less than a week before the start of classes. Those days were torture. Surrounded by people I didn’t know, in a strange environment, I wanted nothing more than to go home. Then something strange happened. Just when I felt nothing could go right, some of the older guys in the dorm started throwing a Frisbee.

Soon, most of the guys and girls in the dorm gathered outside for the impromptu game. We talked. We learned about one another. Before long, someone suggested we all go to the movies. Minutes later, 17 of us were piling into cars to drive across town to the movie theatre.

Along the way, I discovered that two of the guys in the car shared my interest in comic books. They even offered to take me along to their favorite comic shop every week. I began to feel less alone. I started to feel like one of the gang.

We saw the latest horror flick. Everyone loved it. Afterward, we drove downtown to an old restaurant and overran an entire section. Our tables were crowded together, everyone talking and laughing. We ate chili nachos and swapped stories. By the end of the night, we were no longer a bunch of strangers prone to awkward silences. We were a crowd. We were “those guys.” We were now friends.

We had so much fun, we forgot that we were supposed to be missing our homes and families. The disaster that could have been my first college experience had been averted.

The following year, I felt that it was my responsibility to make sure that the freshmen students in our dorm had a similar experience. We included everyone, billing the event as the Second Annual Kuehne Hall Horror Movie Kick-Off Party. A group even larger than the previous year made the journey to the movies and the after-party at the restaurant.

It didn’t take a university-sponsored event or the work of the Student Life office to make a bunch of freshmen feel at home. All it took was a few upperclassmen who remembered what it was like to be the new kid on campus.