Finally a Billiken

In the PT office we get so many questions about what it is like to be a PT Billiken, ranging from topics like studying habits to hobbies to studying abroad. We thought it would help to give you a PT Billiken’s point of view from the ground up, so we asked several of this year’s freshman (Class of 2018) to write about their experiences from time to time. Lillian Chen is from the Chicago area and offered to share about her experience moving into SLU:  

 

After five vigorous hours of packing my room in Naperville into three oversized suitcases and only getting two hours of sleep that night, I had finally arrived; St. Louis was now going to be my home for the next six years. It would be extremely cliché to say that mixed emotions ran through my mind before coming to SLU, but quite frankly there really isn’t any other way to put it. I was more than excited to be able to go out and experience life on my own, while at the same time that exact thought made me extremely nervous. I have never been away from home before, at least not for an extended period of time, and I am an only child, so being away from my parents would feel completely different from a daughter’s standpoint of view. Not only that, but I am the only person within my large group of friends who is attending SLU, which made me even more nervous knowing I won’t have someone close to meet new people with. I was a lost, lonesome, Chicagoan girl who essentially had no idea where she was. But to my surprise, all of these feelings disappeared just moments after I moved in to my room in Reinert Hall. I almost immediately began meeting people who lived on my floor and even more people during Trivia Night and the square dance on the garage rooftop. The following days were not much different as I continued to introduce myself to people and learned new faces and names. All throughout the first few days, the nervousness and concerns I had while unloading my car on move-in day had completely vanished. While calling my friends and parents to tell them about my experience so far at SLU, the one thing that repeatedly comes up is how ‘at-home’ I feel by having such wonderful personalities and nicest people I have ever met.

It’s funny to look back to just a week ago and realize how silly I was, thinking that I was going to be a lost lonesome. Well, maybe still a little lost in the St. Louis area, but it is certainly nearly impossible to be lonesome when you’re surrounded by the nicest people around – the Billikens.

-Lillian Chen (Class of 2018)