You know the semester is about to start when a thousand wide-eyed freshmen descend on the UTM campus.

We come here like Olympians, hailing from many lands to share one thing in common: lighting our torches off a singular massive cauldron of learning. Although not as grand as the recent Athenian ceremony, the weeklong festivities they call Freshman Welcome Week is our opening ceremony, teaching us about the wonders of the campus and the innards of its operation.

Replete with PEPs, picnics, free food, and innumerable droning incantations of “get involved,” we sat through hours of general sessions and played thousands of icebreakers.

Oddly enough, fewer and fewer of us showed up with each successive meeting; slowly the week’s participants were beginning to look like the American basketball team in Athens. I for one have little room to criticize; I don’t believe I was on time for a single freshman event.

But the goal of that tiresome week is baptism by fire; it is showing the freshman that “This is UTM. Do with it what you please.”

And of course some of the information was pointless. There will be plenty of us who, despite rants over academic probation, will choose not to get that 2.0.

There will be more of us, despite repeated boastings by school officials of this class’s high average ACT - composite, who will not keep their lottery scholarships. Sometimes we can try, just like so many athletes in Athens, but we won’t succeed.

Some of us are doomed from the outset because we think we don’t have what it takes to succeed, just like the many athletes in Athens banned for doping violations. That’s when it comes time to work harder. We are here for different reasons, even though they tell us that our priority is an education.

Even though Freshman Welcome Week may have been a worthwhile effort, I do not see how it can really help us become better students.

Freshmen have been building study habits – or a lack thereof – for 13 years, and no marathon-sized freshman experience can help us.

Freshmen, we are ourselves now. As the theme of Freshman Welcome Week says, “the sky’s the limit.”

You can be who you want to be now without the condescension of your family, high schools, or any other influence.

You are free to drink as much as your liver can process and to learn as much knowledge as your brain can hold.

No one else can change who you are, so if you want to jump the high hurdles of success, you’ve got to be the one who does it. The next four or five or 25 years will be decathlon for us, but we can stick it out. Go for the gold.

Even though you may not score that perfect 10 every time, there’s something to gain from it. Learn from your mistakes. And when it comes time for the closing ceremonies of the next UTM Olympiad, may your flame be burning brighter than ever.

Now that the Welcome Week honeymoon is over and real classes are starting, let the games begin.