Lined up along Main Street, with music booming, dozens of the academy's most spirited students cheer wildly at each car driving through campus. For some, the tradition helps ease the nervousness students feel about their first official day at Andover. The changes on campus are subtle at first. Faculty meetings resume, Commons reopens and athletes trying out for sports teams trickle onto the fields. Then, around the second Sunday of September, hundreds of new students and their families flood the campus with a tidal wave of energy and excitement.
Summer is over, and new student orientation begins.
New students arrive from all over the world, and though they might not have a lot in common, they share the same feelings of anxiety, freedom and anticipation when they arrive. Orientation is an opportunity to relax, make friends, work off nervous energy and have questions answered and doubts quelched. I made a lot of friends right away. Among the 338 new students who took part in orientation this year were Cameron Curtis of Pasadena, Calif., and Takvorian of Concord, Mass.-both junior boarders who left home to begin their first year at Andover. Cameron, who has acted in a range of productions from musicals to soap operas to Shakespeare, signs up to be informed about upcoming auditions.