The "Pennypacker" Experience

Move-in day, Freshman year. I don’t know the campus, I’m leaving all my friends and family behind me and I’m in a nerd dorm. I applied at my mom’s persistence for the housing of First Year Science and Engineering dorm in East Halls and on move-in day, that was the last place I wanted to be. I couldn’t help but think- no one will talk to each other, they will all be weird, I won’t have any friends but at least it will be quiet. And quiet it was, I was barely around the first move-in day because I was already moved in and I wanted to be with my WEPO team because they are the only friends I knew at State. But I retreated back to my dorm for the mandatory ice breaker activities. Preparing myself for the worst I sat down to a girl who looked pretty normal and I turned to say hello. We bonded over how weird Pennypacker sounded. Academic football competitions? Tutors in our building? Then to top it off, the next day we were dragged out of bed at 7 in the morning to get pictures in our Pennypacker shirts. We were miserable but at that I met her roommate. Our bonding was complete and both of those girls ended up becoming my best friends at Penn State. From then on Pennypacker just grew more awesome. It was more than just another hall in east. It was more than that. I was able to extremely close to so many people because they were taking the same courses as me and in a lot of my classes. I had class with almost every one of my Pennypacker friends. It made studying and homework so much easier because I could just go up a floor to ask my genius friend for help. We all had a surprising amount in common and never got sick of each other. By the end of the year my group of friends from Pennypacker were glued together. Now I know that this isn’t the first time this has happened. I’ve met many past and present Pennypackerians that feel the same way as my friends and I. I don’t know how that building does it, maybe it is everyone’s stereotypical dread on move-in day, the early morning wake up call, our common hobbies or the magic of the building but The “Pennypacker” Experience went from something so dreaded to something my friends and I will miss very much. And now I’m moving into another hall and I’m nervous now that I have the opposite problem of too high expectations, I guess I can thank Pennypacker for that.

Maggie Golden is a Sophomore in Architectural Engineering. She will be a WEPO Rover this year and is also involved in Vole, SSAE, SWE and THON. This summer, she had an internship with Brinjac Engineering as Lighting Design Intern in Harrisburg, PA.