POLOS: The real way to make a big school feel small

33,119 students. You don’t need the cheesy descriptors of how many smiles that is or how many hands they have or even how many water bottles those people use to understand that it’s a pretty decent amount of human beings.

On paper, Boston University is considered a school of medium size — ahead of smaller liberal arts schools, and behind factories like Ohio State University. I knew that when I applied. I felt that when I toured. So why then, on my first day of freshman year, did I look up and feel like I was simply attending Boston, as opposed to Boston University? And more importantly, how was I supposed to alleviate that?

It was the first day of move-in, and I was a confused freshman, as noob-ish as they get. Boxes were lugged, carts dragged and elevators cursed at, as I literally moved my life from a New Jersey town smaller than BU itself, into my dorm. My whole family was there to help, and just a few collapsed boxes and several hours later, my room was done. The hecticness hadn’t granted me a second to look up, but before I knew it, the bed was made, my desk was set up and it was time for my family to leave.

We walked downstairs and outside. I hugged them all, starting with my mom. A native-born Bostonian, she was too excited to make the goodbye a hard one, even though we were the closest. Then, I moved to my dad, who had been crying ever since I committed to college nine months ago — being an older sister has some perks, and this was not one. I pinched him, hoping he would go from sad to angry, which of course, he didn’t. Ava, my youngest sister, was looking up at me with tears brimming her eyes.

“Hey, you!” I joked. “I expect pictures of that first day of middle school outfit. Are we clear?”

I felt a lump in my throat, but could not bring myself to cry in front of her. We hugged, and then I turned to my other sister, a rising junior in high school, who had been dreading this day more than anyone else — and squeezed her. She was my best friend. We had seen it all together. I really didn’t have much to say, other than that I knew we would talk everyday. I let go and turned around, walking towards what everyone kept calling my future — and opened the door.

Before I had a chance to inhale, my sister came running around the corner crying for one more hug. “So this is it, O? I just leave now?” I felt this one. Big time. I told her I’d see her soon, hugged her and got on the elevator.

I looked up and could not see straight.

“I’m in college,” I heard myself saying. My brain was going 100 different ways. “Alone. I don’t know anyone. Or what I’m doing. What am I doing? Where do I take my trash out? What if I can’t find my classes. Am I even in the right building?”

I found myself crying. Alone in a — wait. I was not alone. I really was not alone. There was a guy, my age or a little older, standing next to me. I was so distracted I forgot to think about hitting the button to get me — or us — to said future. He asked me what floor, and I told him among a series of sniffles, “16.” He reached over and pressed it. I made a joke about him catching me at a bad time. He told me it would get better. That you get used to it. The bell rang, signifying his departure — and he introduced himself and shook my hand as he got off.

That was the absolute first experience I had in college of feeling alone and reconciling it, even just for a split second. His choice to move enabled me to know I could feel this way and come back from it.

There are more perks to going to school in a city than there are cons. Anyone here would agree. But there are times the school, or even the city itself, feels absolutely huge. How do you make a city you share with 600,000 other people feel smaller? It became clear to me that day on the elevator.

There isn’t a perfect formula. In fact, I don’t even think it is as easy as just joining a club or two like admissions claims. Fixing it starts with being okay with being overwhelmed. Then, with understanding that even though it isn’t a common Instagram subject or Snapchat story, it is felt by everyone. Your life just flipped upside down. New people, a new room, new food, new classes, a new city or state or maybe even a new country. Let yourself freak out a little. And then understand BU is manageable because of people like the boy in the elevator. It is manageable because of the people that make up the clubs — not the clubs themselves. It is manageable because it is a school of intelligent, hardworking kids who know how to talk about things separate from just being intelligent and hardworking.

And it is a great — but, indeed a big — place to be.