The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is probably a very good school. It's on the higher side as far as tuition and room and board goes - not quite as high as an Ivy League school, but up there.

But the campus is pretty and modern, the computer labs were very impressive when she toured them, and its academic achievements are many (even if it's most well-known for agricultural science these days.) The transistor was invented here, for crying out loud. In fact, the guys who invented it lived in this very same dorm hall! As well as some group of musicians who everyone else seems rather more interested in.

Most of the paperwork is already done. The process of moving in is surprisingly smooth, thanks to groups of volunteers unloading cars and pushing little carts piled high with suitcases around industriously. The dorm's front desk hands her a very peppy 'student handbook' along with her room key, the bathroom key, and a bag containing an internet modem and a few cables. "Oh, and there will be a mandatory floor meeting in the common area at eight tonight."

“I’ll be there!”

And then it's off to the car with a Helpful Volunteer in tow, back to her newly assigned room (no roommate yet), hugs for parents, promise to call on Saturday or sooner, see them off, back to the room and set up her computer. How's the internet connection?

The internet is...Acceptable! Though it forces her to use Ethernet, wi-fi is forbidden. (Despite that, some enterprising soul has already created a wifi access point called 'F1ght da P0w3r'.) And the handbook warns her that her speed will be automatically throttled if she uses more than two gigabytes a day, just above the contact number for Campus IT Services.

It'll do for most of her purposes. There's supposed to be better connections in the labs anyway. Her friends all okay? Her backup network all okay? Yep. Good.

She unpacks the rest of her things into an organization so as to vaguely claim half of the space in the room.

She goes out to acquire her student ID and maybe textbooks (if the store's not too busy), taking a slightly meandering path to start getting familiar with the layout.

The dorm itself has a big dining hall in the same building - they'll scan her student ID once she gets it (at the Illini Union Bookstore over past the main quad, can't miss it.)

The bookstore is not yet super crowded. And most of the textbooks are in the basement, conveniently organized into stacks with labels like "ECON 100s" "ECON 200s", etc. Some sort of bank shares the same real estate as the ID printing station in the back of the bookstore, and is pressuring kids into opening accounts, by almost acting like it's required. They back off at the first sign of balking, though.

The physics building is basically right across the street from the dorm hall, along with a few other (non-campus-sponsored) apartments and so on. On the other side of the dorm hall, a big theater takes up a whole block of space. All of the academic buildings she can see look very old and regal, in that university way.

The Main Quad is pretty much a straight walk out the door and to the right from the dorm - it's a wide, grassy field with academic buildings around it and a few tasteful, pretty trees, plus sidewalks. A stream with bridges and concrete banks marks the border to the Engineering campus is to the north, with a smaller Engineering Quad and a lot more outlying buildings. There's a very impressive, four-story Engineering Library. Past the main quad to the south tends to be agricultural and liberal arts type places. "Green street" (with a lot of popular restaurants and shops) and the official campus bookstore are on the far side of the main quad.

There's a bus stop right next to the bookstore. A bus arrives as she approaches, with "13N SILVER" on a digital display. Student IDs come with full free bus access, so figuring out the bus system at some point would probably be a good idea.

It will take a few hours if she wants to find all her classrooms in advance - or maybe less than an hour if she just takes a quick look around various places.

This is not time to plan detailed routes. This is time to go put away her textbooks and then flop on her bed or maybe her computer and take a break before there is Meeting.

Her roommate shows up before the meeting. "Sandra Bouvel, nice to meet you!" Three of her family members help cart in - a lot of stuff, particularly clothes and makeup and such.

Once the helpers are gone, "So what are you studying? I'm here for General Engineering. Haven't decided what kind I'll transfer into yet."

“Kaitlyn Corbett.” She attempts to stay out of the way of the moving process and vaguely nervously fiddles with the positioning of her own stuff.

“Well, I declared computer science but that doesn't feel like the whole story, and I think I'm waiting until I know more about what classes are actually like, versus how they are described in the catalog, before I try for a minor or something to get closer to the course of study I actually want.”

"Yeah, we've got time to figure this stuff out. I hear there's great clubs and programs here. D'you mind if I rearrange my furniture-" she starts on it without waiting for confirmation

Sandra remains idly chatty while she arranges her closet, knickknacks on her desk, and setting up a clunky desktop computer, and soon it's time for that floor meeting thing.

Idle chatter does not demand prompt and explicit responses! She can arrange her own stuff and do computer things too!

She heads out to the meeting well after the “hey come to the meeting” hollering in the hallways but before she would actually be late.

The RA introduces herself and points out where her room is. "If you have any issues with the facilities, problems with another resident, things like that, come talk to me, slip a note under my door, send me an email. Whatever. I'll help you figure things out if you guys need it. Now, about rules..." There are a few base rules ("no smoking in the building", "if you see a monster, walk away and call 911, not that we get many on campus" "don't let non-residents stay over for more than a few hours without talking to me") and then the RA invites them to discuss 'community standards'. Things like 'don't play loud music at 1 AM' and 'if you make a mess in the minikitchen, for god's sake clean it up'.

Kaitlyn would like loud music and related activities to stop at 11 PM but understands that that probably won't go over well. She suggests signage pointing at the cleaning supplies (and possibly in general the correct places for things), because people are more likely to do the right thing if it is also the easy and obvious thing.

She doesn't say much otherwise, though she sometimes looks like she was almost going to.

The group eventually settles on "11 PM Sunday through Thursday, 1 AM on weekends" for the end of loud noises.

Cleaning supplies can be checked out from the front desk. If she wants to print out papers explaining how to check them out, or explaining what should and shouldn't go into the recycling bins, the RA will post them.

"And oh everyone, the freshman commencement ceremony is tomorrow morning at 11, down at the football stadium. You can take the 22-S bus and get off at the stadium. You really should go see it. There's going to be a free lunch and they'll hand out bookstore coupons, if nothing else will tempt you."

Someone asks if there is a Spirit Association branch on campus. "It's in downtown Champaign, actually. The local fighting Bearers spend most of their time dealing with things in the farmland 'round here, though."

(That doesn't sound like an optimal strategy for a clean kitchen but this is not the place for arguing that.)

Okay that is slightly too many facts that she actually wants to keep straight time to pull out the voice recorder and quietly repeat all those times and places — “quiet hours 11 sunday to thursday 1 AM otherwise — ceremony tomorrow stadium via bus 22-S — spirit association is downtown" while stepping back and doing her best to not actually interfere with anyone else listening to whatever is next. Then it can keep recording.

There is an argument over whether the bathroom door should be locked - it's going to be annoying to keep using your key especially if you're in a hurry or something - the RA says that official policy is that if even one person requests the bathrooms be locked, then locked they shall be.

Then she goes back to explaining rules. Particularly, she repeats the university's extremely dim view of plagiarism and cheating.

A sheaf of forms is passed around. "Inspection forms for your rooms. If something is broken at the end of the year they might decide to charge you for it unless you note it down now. If something is wrong, don't hesitate to submit a work ticket. The maintenance crew will take care of it sooner or later. So, note down any obvious damage, sign on the line that says you read and understand the rules, and slip it under my door. Also, make sure you sign the clipboard that's going around, that says you were at this floor meeting. Once you do, class is dismissed, but I'll be hanging around for an hour or so if you need anything."

Good good, clipboard form and not-clipboard form and leave and go over the room's condition in an adversarial frame of mind and now figure out how the preparing-for-bed-routine works with a bathroom shared with strangers and — go sit down at the computer and catch up with actual friends rather than impersonally interact with maybe-possibly-future-friends. Then it is time to go to bed at a reasonable hour and lie awake trying to get used to new nighttime sounds.

The bathroom is spacious, has a long row of sinks and mirrors well away from the toilets, and individual shower stalls with individual (cramped) changing rooms.

Her room is in pretty good shape overall.

Fast forwarding to commencement - Thousands of undergraduates crowding into the stands of a football stadium (and not by half filling it to capacity). There are speeches by self-important administrators and a few professors about the power of dedication, hard work, and creative learning, and how you the students are the future of America. There is bragging about the school's academic achievements and history - the story of the transistor features there. There's a reasonably impressive display by the school's marching band.

The promised free lunch and coupons appear, at least.

Yaaaay uuuuussssss.

Live music is a thing, at least. And lunch is a thing. Anybody chatting about something actually interesting in the vicinity of lunch?

There's a group discussing what they hope to learn in the CS classes.

Eh, sure.

"What do you even mean by 'hard algorithms'? Isn't that more math than computer science?"

"Well, it's kind of both? I agree that it's closer to math, though." The guy shrugs. "I think you might call what I really want to see 'data structures', not 'hard alhorithms', though."

“Show me your flowcharts and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won’t usually need your flowcharts; they’ll be obvious,” she quotes.

"...Is that from a book?"

“The Mythical Man-Month, Fred Brooks. I haven't actually read it, I just like the quote, even if I don't entirely agree with it — the thing which should really come first is the interface, the API, the abstraction, not either the algorithms or the data structures. But maybe I'm too influenced by networking.”

Someone else pipes up, "Yeah, what good is a program if the interface is unusable?"

Data Structures Guy shrugs. "I'll have more fun doing things that don't involve interfaces."