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Our daughter and I both (separately) had a great time at her college orientation. Juniata seems to get a lot of things right and this orientation was the next feather in their cap, after how well they handled the admissions process. All the parents seemed to agree. The culture here is student centered, warm, nurturing, and sincere. Our daughter characterized it with these words: open, honest, and thoughtful.

She got exactly the class schedule for the fall that she wanted, and the advisor she hoped for (the head of the Physics department). She made some friends that talked together on a vast range of interesting topics, and they plan to stay in touch over the summer. She won the raffle and got a free backpack, as well as other school bling. She met a girl she plans on requesting to room with in the fall; in the last photo you can meet Jen from Long Island who wants to do museum studies.

I enjoyed meeting other parents at the information sessions, the picnic dinner at the lovely Raystown Lake (they even had a cruise on the lake for the parents) and at the meals. I talked to a deaf mother who was impressed that they hired three sign language interpreters so she wouldn’t miss any of the orientation. It turns out that the mom I sat next to in the information sessions is the mother of our daughter’s future roommate. And at lunch, when avoiding my daughter’s table with her new friends, I went to sit with who I thought would be fun to meet, and it turned out they were the parents of who our daughter was sitting with. All the staff were terrific (I especially liked the chaplain) and every parent was very thankful that their child would be attending here.

Her class has only 390 kids and is 57% female, is from 26 states, has 36% involved in sports, and 30% of them are first generation in college. The class was described as confident, intelligent, hard working, cooperative, creative, civic-minded, not affluent, not party-animals, and team oriented. What a refreshing bunch of kids these were! Even though this group is overwhelmingly white– especially since the international students have their own orientation at the end of the summer– our daughter discerned a lot of diversity among these kids. She contributes to that diversity with her Christian Science  background and having been homeschooled. Her college experience is off to a great start! I am so grateful!

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