Driving into campus off of Grand Avenue, there were thousands of first-year students rolling bins on the sidewalk and into their dorms as new students set up their new homes.
“It was pretty smooth," first-year Sydney Larson said. "The only hard part was I did have to get up a hill rolling like four barrels of stuff for my dorm but besides that, it was pretty mellow.”
Despite all the apparent chaos, for mother Kim Larson dropping off her daughter Sydney, it all went according to plan.
“It moved really well," Larson said. "People are really nice. We had a lot of helpers. We knew where to go and things were timed out well.”
It’s the Week of Welcome, or "WOW," and according to Cal Poly Director of New Student & Transition Programs Dale Stoker, there were 6,300 new students registered for WOW broken into 246 groups of 25 to 30 young adults.
“I actually moved in surprisingly quickly," first-year Austin Hartman said. "It's just like crazy to go from having your own room to sharing a space. But it's also great at the same time to, like, build your community.”
Don’t mistake efficiency for quiet, though, as the on-campus Cal Poly Mustang Shop prepared for an influx of parents and students ready to stock up on dorm room and school essentials.
“We just put as much out as possible — we staff as much as possible," Regional Manager for College Bookstores Amie Mellinger-Watts explained.
Surprisingly the main thing parents want for their kids at the Mustang store is peace of mind.
“Combination locks are the most frequently asked-for item," Mellinger-Watts said. "So, I've walked quite a few dads over to the combination locks, picking those up for their student.”
It takes a village to pull off the beginning of school with more than 8,600 kids moving onto campus but with a packed schedule, kids are hoping to enter Monday with everything in order.
“It's not too far and I'm excited to have my friends come up and I get to show them around the area and everything,” Larson said.
Any other students who are not first-years move onto campus beginning Friday before the first day of fall term on Monday.
