MORGANTOWN — WVU was bustling with activity again for the first time all summer, as the first day of classes kicked off the fall semester Wednesday.
After almost a week of fun Welcome Week activities, roughly 30,000 students settled in for the semester-long grind.
For many first-year students, the first day of college is a major life milestone.
“It’s really cool and also kind of unexpected, I didn’t think there would be this many people, but it was good,” said Gage Vincent, a freshman biochemistry student from Braxton County. “I’ve only had one class so far. The rest of the day I just have to go to chemistry and math, and then tomorrow I have two classes and Friday I have three.”
While for returning upperclassmen, the first day of a new semester is the beginning of the next step of a long journey.
Katherine Lunt, a junior psychology student from Cincinnati, Ohio, and Ian Peterson, a sophomore geology student from Loudoun County, Va., are both looking forward to diving further into their respective majors.
“I’m starting to break out of the run-of-the-mill (general education) classes and getting more into more specialized classes,” Peterson said.
Lunt hopes to continue to study the brain, and then help people with mental health issues when she graduates.
“I’d like to be kind of a counselor/therapist,” she said. “I want to be able to help teenagers and young adults deal with anxiety and other things.”
Lunt also wants to see the annual FallFest concert, held the night before classes start, moved back a day or two.
She said that everyone has the expectation of going out the night before classes, but it can make things tough for the first day.
A common theme among many of the students seems to be anticipation of the upcoming WVU football season.
“I’ve always been a big Mountaineer fan,” Vincent said.
Academically, most students just want to keep their heads above water and do well in classes and maintain a high GPA.
“I just want to get my GPA up, it could always be higher,” Peterson said.
