First day of fall semester 2022.
Nola Bailey slept through the alarm to wake her up for her first college class ever. She knew she would, though.
“I set it for seven because I knew I was going to sleep through it. So I got up at like 7:30,” Bailey said.
Her first class was at 9 a.m., “so I still got to class on time, which was good.”
Bailey, a major in computer engineering from Fayetteville, Arkansas, is one of about 2,200 freshmen at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga who started their college lives on Monday, Aug. 22.
In the human rivers between classes, most students walked around campus with purposeful strides, making it challenging to pick out first-year students who usually try extremely hard not to look like freshmen. A few could be recognized, though, by the slightly glazed look in their eyes.
Welcome Week tents were set up around campus to help students—whatever their level—to answer questions.
Workers at the stations said the most common question was: “How do I get to the (insert name here) building?” To help, campus maps were available at the tents.
Freshman Katie Madison was nervous about being on time for the first class in her college career. Living in West Campus Housing, she was headed to the College of Engineering and Computer Science building for a morning algebra course.
Madison, who is from Nashville and undecided on her major, was not late for the class. Far from it.
“I did not anticipate how long it would take me to get there, so I arrived 30 minutes early,” she said.
