It’s the end of February and (I know probably everyone has said this, but it needs to be said once more) I don’t know where the time has gone. I have no idea when or how we got to the point where next quarter and next year are already on our minds almost every day.

Half of our freshman year has flown by, and we’ve already begun choosing classes for next quarter. Well, maybe you have; I finally got to register yesterday. My apologies go out to the 12th rotationers out there.

We’re trying to look for a place to live next year, beginning to think about spring break and floundering through our midterms, upcoming finals, projects and whatever else is on our academic to-do list.

And in the midst of all that, there’s Week of Welcome (WOW) to think about. If you haven’t started thinking about it, do it. No, it’s definitely not too early to start thinking about our first week back at Cal Poly.

WOW information sessions are occurring (go to one), and the application is out on our Cal Poly portal. Spring training will be here sooner than you know it, and now is the perfect time to consider it.

It seems like just yesterday when we went through WOW. While moving into our super spacious residence halls, all anyone could talk about was WOW. I vividly remember trying to find my WOW group at O’Neill Green, having no idea where I was going and overwhelmed by the amount of people surrounding me and, let’s not forget, the bright neon, highlighter yellow that was all over the place — I really don’t think that color will leave my memory. But being there, it was almost as if I was 5 again and was lost in a shopping mall. Not that I have ever been lost in a shopping mall, but I’d imagine it would feel something like that.

I remember our whole WOW, which I didn’t expect I would be able to remember with the chaos of school going on around me, but I guess I have a better memory than I thought. And maybe a little (big) part of why I remember that week is because it was actually a week worth remembering.

Reflecting back to our little WOWie selves and our WOW, we realize all of the hard work our loving WOW leaders put into the week just to make it great for us, and only us.

And next year, you’ll want to show those incoming freshmen a great time by yelling “WOWies” all over the place and seeing their cute, scared and excited faces throughout campus. Thinking about that just gets me all excited for next year.

I don’t know about you, but I think that would be so much fun, and just being a WOW leader in general or just involved in WOW in any way would be incredibly fun and definitely an experience you’d remember.

So that’s why I’m doing it. To yell “WOWies” all day, every day of that wondrous week and to make sure the baby freshmen (I really shouldn’t be able to call them this because we’re still freshmen ourselves) have a beautiful start to a great school year at a beautiful college.

You don’t even need to be WOW leader to participate in the fun. Be part of Event Staff. That’s where you’ll probably find me. Unless you want to be my co and can convince me why you’d want to be my co, I’m all for it. But it has to be good.

So sign up for WOW and go through spring training with me — why wouldn’t you want to? (Okay, I’m kidding, guys).

But really though, do it. Not because I said so, but because you want to make sure the incoming baby freshman have a week as great as — if not better than — you did when you were once a baby freshman walking the hills across the campus.

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