Here we are: The new academic year is starting again, almost too quickly. This past week, the quiet of summer evaporated into the clatter of suitcases on pavement and the shuffle of new keys in old doors. Walking over campus, I could almost hear the hum of anticipation in the hallways. For many of you, it feels like a reunion. But for those of you just arriving here, it must feel like stepping into a room where everyone already seems to know the rules. We have different names for these first weeks: move-in, orientation, the start of classes. But really, it is the beginning of another story, fully to be written — how to make this place feel like home again, for all of us.
What rarely gets said, especially in these first weeks, is that starting over — or starting altogether — isn’t easy at all. What rarely gets said, especially in these first weeks, is that starting over — or starting altogether — isn’t easy. There is pressure to look excited after being one of the lucky ones admitted here, to slide back into friendships from previous years, to know where you belong and what to do. These expectations weigh heavily, especially on those — many of us — who feel in-between: in-between Ithaca and home; in-between classes and obligations; in-between the version of ourselves we left behind in May and the one we’re still trying to grow into this fall. Last year, I saw seniors who returned from abroad and suddenly felt like strangers; transfers who wondered if they arrived too late or not at all; and freshmen trying to learn not just where the dining halls are, but how to act as though they already belong. To be in-between is not failure — it is simply what transition feels like. And for most of us, that state lasts longer than the orientation schedule admits.
If there is one piece of advice I want to share about new or renewed college life, it is this: You don’t have to carry it alone. Community doesn’t emerge or return all at once; it is rebuilt each semester in the smallest exchanges — someone holding open a door, asking if you’re lost, remembering your name when you didn’t expect it. Those gestures might seem too small to matter in the grand scheme, but they are how belonging begins and how an unfamiliar campus becomes a place that remembers you back.
For me, the sense of beginning arrived in a small moment this week: carrying my coffee across Ho Plaza and suddenly spotting faces of students I hadn’t seen since May. Their smiles carried the ease of old routines, but others looked just as tentative as I once did when I first arrived last August. I distinctly remember the mix of excitement and humility in that first fall semester: eager to teach, but also learning the rhythms of this wonderful, at times intimidating place. Even now, a year later, I carry those impressions with me. They remind me that what feels overwhelming at first is softened, slowly, by routines and, above all, the kindness of strangers who become students, colleagues and friends.
One of my favorite philosophers of education, Paulo Freire, once wrote that hope is an ontological need. This is a statement that can carry us into this first week of orientation and disorientation. Each late August, that possibility takes the form of a fresh start. Each new semester insists that we can begin again, even if last year felt like a stumble. Even if — or precisely because — the world outside feels uncertain. Even if we ourselves are uncertain.
If the first week feels overwhelming, know that you are not alone. Starting again is always both exhilarating and disorienting. And so, as you head back into classrooms, join clubs, pass through the Temple of Zeus or find your spot in the library, try to notice the small ways you are beginning again — not just with syllabi and assignments, but with each other. To say hello to someone new, to invite a classmate to lunch, to thank the staff member keeping your building running — these are not distractions from academic life, but the very threads that hold it together. The things that make this year meaningful rarely happen all at once. They arrive quietly and slowly, in gestures, in conversations and in the courage to say, “I don’t know where I’m going — yet.”
So: Welcome back, welcome in. May this semester bring not only the knowledge, deadlines and grades we all expect, but also the small, steady signs that you are not navigating it alone.
Jan Burzlaff is an Opinion Columnist and a Postdoctoral Associate in the Program for Jewish Studies. Office Hours (Open Door Edition) is his weekly dispatch to the Cornell community — a professor’s reflections on teaching, learning and the small moments that make a campus feel human. Readers can submit thoughts and questions anonymously through the Tip Sheet here. He can also be reached at profjburzlaff@cornellsun.com.
