6
Wednesday, August 23, 1978
University Daily Kansan
Freshmen
From page five
anything was, so I sat at home," Hickert said.
Hickert added that if she had had a car it might have been different. Another student said she had not gone out the first day of school because year before she was afraid of getting lost.
The student, Linda Koehn, Halasted sophomore, said she was not used to seeing so many buildings, cars and unfamiliar landmarks. The farm and her home row has about 1,000 people.
KOEIN SAID that because she was afraid of getting lost, she would take an old camera and walk the streets.
"He was my security blanket," she said. "Most of the students said they had been in class and were not able to stay. If they had cars and if home was not too far away, they usually went there at night."
For some, the idea of going back home is very tempting, as Speler witsily recalls.
"There were many nights I cared myself to sleep." Koenn said. She said she used to go home at least every three weeks although it was a four-hour drive.
"My parents used to come up for all football games," she said. "I once was so sick."
Some students wanted to call it quits during their first semester. But either friends or parents persuaded them to hang on at least until the end of their first year.
ATHERTON SAID his roommate would leave KU if he had not persuaded him to
His roommate, Kirby McCullough, Pittsburg senior, is originally from Arma, but went to high school and college briefly in Pittsburg. So, McCullough said, he left a lot of good friends in Pittsburg when he came to KU.
"I was kind of a manic depressive," he said.
"Only my roommate and my brother how badly I was ready to abandon her."
If something had gone well, like a test, KU seemed to be great, he explained. But whenever he was slightly depressed everything seemed to be terribly bad.
Some students, however, do leave KU the first semester they are here. But the figures were not available, Jeannette Johnson, assistant to the vice chancellor for student
SHE SAID that the University was currently conducting a survey to determine why people dropped out since there were no such data currently available.
"We want to get to students before they leave." she said.
Johnson says she knows firsthand the problems small town people have. She faced them as a small-town student who went to a private school as a teacher helping students to adjust.
"I've known students who were so lonely that they simply could not perform," she added.
Many students, she says, are frightened and intimidated, just like she was. She said it takes only one or two people to reassure these students.
But Johnson says she thinks that type of counseling is done on an informal basis.
"Not every student has the guts to approach a professor," she said.
FOR THOSE students who do not dare to talk to their instructors there are counselling
Students may go to the Department of Psychology (which is open to students at no cost or a slight fee), the Student Health Office or the Office of the Dean of Student Life.
The office of Minority Affairs is also open for counseling.
But most of KU's faculty and students are unsure of these counseling opportunities,
The Student Handbook prepared by the office of student affairs is an attempt to give students a better understanding.
The handbook informs students where they should touch, health of people and
--first time last fall to all new students at enrollment.
HANDBOOKS WERE available for the
According to Kathy Hoggard, information center director, most new students picked up the handbook at enrollment because it was handed to them.
The handbook is also available to 105 students at the Information Center, 105 Strong Hall, the Office of Student Affairs and the Office of the Dean of Student Life.
Getting used to being alone and lost in an unfamiliar place was hard for many. For some, getting bad grades at the beginning of their college career was a blow to their ego.
Spreier was used to having straight As in her small town in western Kansas. She was distraught after one of her instructors at KU handed back a "D" on her first test.
"You think 'Oh God! I'm a failure,'" she said, "It's hard to get used to having bad grades. You think you're good and there are 5,000 other people that are better."
Most of the students interviewed said they had had problems during their first semester, especially in English. Most of those students blamed their lack of knowledge on the school system back home or on their high school instructors.
SPERIEI WAS not the only one to feel distressed about her grades.
"With all those modular courses," Jackie Allen said, referring to the different English literature courses offered, "we never got used to them. The course is sophisticated and they skipped the basics."
Many students also had problems writing themes.
"I had never written in my life before I came here," Hickert said.
MOST SMALL-TOWN students agreed that Kansas City people, for instance, were better prepared and more used to studying than people were and this discouraged them.
JOHN HOO, MARION junior, said he rarely wrote them in high school, and that he was at a disadvantage with students who were in college. Those same those teams could afford better teachers.
Jo Ellen Johnson, assistant instructor in English, has taught English 101, the introductory course required for all freshmen, for two years.
Although some English instructors agreed that students who came from small towns had problems in English, they did not think the students' discouragement was justified.
"They have a lot of trouble with English," she said. "They have trouble expressing what they think because they are awfully confused."
"A lot of them are overwhelmed by the size of the campus and the demands of KU and they can be discouraged. A lot of them just plain disappear."
JOHNSON SAID that 10 percent of the class in the 1977-78 school year had not come back. Although she said she does not know where she is from, from some of them were from small towns.
Johnson says she knows they are confused and disoriented because of the journal they were published in.
But Johnson said that their discouragement at getting Cs or Ds on their wives was overly serious.
"There's no shame in it. It only indicates that they have skills to learn vitre.," she said.
Johnson said that students from small towns were all the more discouraged because they were at KU to test themselves. They had no desire to be in the beginning they thought they were failures.
She said they also assumed that people长大 high schools were better prepared to face real-world problems.
"It is so often the opposite," she said. "A lot of kids from bigger high schools are wrecked by mini modulars. In smaller high schools get individual attention and basic English."
GARY MATASSARIN, assistant instructor in English, also teaches English 101
Matassarain said some high schools did turn out better English students. "You can really pinpoint certain high schools such as Shawnee Mission and Wichita Southeast," he said. "Maybe it's because they get more money."
"Lawrence High, too, puts out good writers," he added.
One might wonder why these small-town students have stayed at KU against seeming action.
SPREIER REMEMBERS what it was like at home. "I was bored silly. There are more people here my age and more people to know."
MIESNER-MILSTEAD OUT OF THE GRAVES OF FRANCE COME FULL BODIED SPIRITS
For some it is the need to be independent, for others the desire to have a college degree or other academic credential in university in the state. Yet for others it is the urge to leave home where they are.
Janis Hall, RileyJunior, said she was very enthusiastic about meeting so many men
But he agrees that the idea of small-town people being less intelligent is a false esthetic.
"It was a lot of fun," she said. "In a small town you just don't have a variety of rivals."
Taken from the gravelly or pebbly soil, the Graves (Grahv) stretches some 25 miles to the southwest of Bordeaux, France, and is known for fine red and white wines. Meisner Milstead carries a large selection of fine French wines.
But Atherton said that it was more difficult to go out with a woman at KU. He said most women he had met were from Kansas City.
However, he said he might be prejudiced because he had zone to Wichita Southeast.
"I'm a pretty old-fashioned country girl," she said.
Jim Hoech shall welcome his newfound freedom. "In high school nobody goes out to drink. You pick her up and take her home, you have to bring her back at a decent time."
"AT FIRST I was intimidated," he said.
"at *lots of airs* are aloof."
Ron Allen said KU taught him about pretude.
"I didn't know what prejudice was," he said. "But living with these people from Kansas City, I learned what prejudice was. They really had stereotypes." Allen said he was referring to the people he had lived with during his first year at KU
Although all the students interviewed did not react the same way to the different people they met, all of them said that accepting different people's lifestyles and different situations was a big part of adjusting to KU.
Even now she said she had not adapted to what she faced free of severe stress at KKL.
Mail letters late at post offices
The two Lawrence post offices leave their lobbies open 24 hours a day. Stamps and envelopes can be purchased in machines in the office where caners can be dropped in the boxes at the station.
The two city post offices are open from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, and 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
The main post office in Lawrence at 646
Vermont St. The Jayhawk station is at
180 S. Pine Street.
The campus post office is open from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, and is closed on Saturday. This office occasionally closes for lunch from noon to 1
If a student decides to mail a letter at 3 a.m. and that finds it doesn't have a stamp or envelope, the post offices in Lawrence are partly open to accommodate him.
Meisner-Milstead Liquor Holiday Plaza (2 doors west of Kiefs)
The campus post office is in the basement of Strong Hall. Stamps can be purchased
Residence halls can foster cliques
Lined up like train cars on the crest of Daisy Hill, McColm, Eldsworth, Hashinger, Lakes and Templin Hills can be laughed at, but as you enter Lawrence on Iowa Street.
Home is a residence hall for approximately 4,000 KU students.
Staff Writer
Oliver, a coeducational hall, is located just south of the Allen Field House at the corner of College Drive and 26th Street.
Joseph R. Pearson, a men's hall close to the center of campus at 1122 W. Campus Road, is just west of Memorial Stadium and overlooks the Kaw Valley and Potter Lake.
By DEBBIE EIFFERT
Up the hill and to the east of Memorial Stadium is a women's hall, Gertrude Sellars Pearson-Corbin, which is within walking distance to downtown Lawrence.
Approximately 700 freshman and
senior students born at GSPC-Barrington, the oldest ones.
"ITS OF special interest to freshman women, and has the reputation of being the hall for a lot of women who think they'd like to learn about the Greek system," Carlson said.
JRP, a hall of approximately 350 men, has a large number of return students each year. Freshmen and upperclassmen live in the building a section is reserved for graduate students.
One new feature at JRP Hall is a sauna, which was installed in May.
Oliver Hall, known as the "zoo" to some,
houses 600 men and women who are mostly
bachelor's students.
Susan Myres, former resident assistant at river, defenso "zoo as" a "dorm that always leaves you alone."
"It's called that even though a lot of the other dorms have more trouble," she said.
Hashinger features plays, music and recitals, and organizes the annual Spring Festival.
"Lewis Hall has home, atmosphere,
very easy going. Nichelle McClain,
will come."
She said that Oliver gives a student a little bit of everything rather than emphasizing on the math.
The residence halls that fill up the fastest,
be said, are the smaller ones such as
the Browns.
TWO NEW features at Oliver this year are new outside all-purpose athletics courts.
By July, the residence halls were 92 per cent full, according to Kip Grosshans, a professor.
The largest residence hall on campus is McColm Hall, a coeducational hall with a population of 750 sophomore to graduate students. More than 25 per cent of the residents are from 30 different countries, so their attendance has been increased annually by an International Festival.
"This year it was pretty straight across the wall that it fell down. There was no any on me that had filled it."
The residence hall for those interested in creative arts is Hasinger, who 400 men and women, many of them fine arts students, from freshmen to graduates, live.
Ellsworth is a coeducational hall with approximately 600 freshmen. There is an emphasis on programs planned by students and staff, including political candidate forums, an international banquet, and a foreign language program.
"It has a free atmosphere where people are encouraged to be innovative," Mary Stabb, assistant to the director of residential programs, said.
*STUDENTS ARE really involved with the hall and do a lot of their own running of
She said that the hall, which was originally a graduate hall, will cater mostly to the needs of upperclassmen this year since there are so many returning students.
it, so there is very little vandalism," she said.
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