FOOT: An adventure in the great outdoors

By Seth L. Gordon

So you've chosen to do FOOT. Good.

My Freshman Outdoor Orientation Trip (FOOT) is among the most rewarding experiences I have had since my arrival at Yale. This is for one simple reason: FOOT is designed to be different. It isn't about Yale, what classes to take, where the cool hangouts are, how old and high Harkness Tower is, or which campus groups to join. FOOT is about people.

FOOT is about meeting and getting to know a few of your future classmates away from Yale and New Haven. It's about teaching each other a thing or two. It's about starting the year off in a way that prepares you for all the things that get thrown at you during your first few weeks as a freshman.

When I arrived on Old Campus for my FOOT trip, I had no idea what to expect. I found out from my leaders, Rosemary and Nye, that most of my group members had already arrived and were meeting one another. People in my group hailed from New York, Idaho, Seattle, Jerusalem, Tokyo, New Jersey, San Francisco, Wisconsin, and Maine. From the "get-to-know-you" games that we played, I learned that few of us had nicknames, had been to Nebraska, or knew much about Yale.

I discovered that we were all nervous, confused, and curious. We wanted very badly to start Yale on a good note and to do well. That night, we stayed in Welch Hall on Old Campus and bonded. Jackie and Dave told ghost stories, Russ recounted middle-school trauma, I played harmonica, and Hiko explained the high-school system in Japan.

From our first meeting it was clear that this group was so diverse that we wouldn't have met each other any other way. I realized during my freshman year that my FOOT group had functioned as a preview of what later passed in my dorm room. Both times, I was put with people that, had I been left to my own devices, I might never have met.

In many ways, the week I spent with my FOOT group served as a sort of concentrated preparation for the year to come, especially for the challenge of meeting many people from very different backgrounds.

After an early wake-up and a three-hour bus ride up to central Vermont, we strapped on our packs and headed out for six long days out in the wilderness of the Appalachian Trail. All but a few of us had never hiked before and we were all nervous about the upcoming adventure. Rosemary and Nye calmed our fears, explaining that none of the hiking would be especially rigorous and that the group would hike at a pace that suited us all. "The point isn't to be all tough and brawny," Rosemary said.

This turned out to be exactly right: when Jackie got a blister, we stopped to patch it up; when Justin was tired, we slowed down and redistributed some of the weight in his pack to ease his load. Hiking got easier and easier as the week went on. Each night we ate huge meals, played games, and usually had some time to sit back and read a good book or take a walk to see the view at an overlook. On FOOT, I had some of the wonderful, long conversations which I had long associated with the college experience.

FOOT not only allowed me to get to know a bunch of people before my first days as a freshman, but, more importantly, it helped me to find myself. The month or so before FOOT, I had been so busy getting ready for school physically (shopping, making money, packing everything up) that I had never given myself time to slow down and prepare emotionally for the year that lay ahead of me. FOOT gave me that time: to hike, to sit, to think. I was given the opportunity to really reflect upon the college experience that I was about to tackle, and that made the actual act of tackling it all the more enjoyable.

Upon my return to Old Campus, as the whirlwind of freshman year began, not only was I ready for Yale, but also I had eleven new friends to boot.

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