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• 1 media/first encounter.jpg 2019-04-24T15:24:21+00:00 My First Encounter 14 image_header 2019-05-03T17:40:13+00:00 It was on that day that I first toured Rowan University’s campus, and found myself falling in love with the large sprawls of grass on University Green, the sight of students lying about in the field, playing Frisbee or tanning or singing over strums of their guitars, with the sounds of their speakers blasting music, the collection of their voices resonating throughout the Chamberlain Student Center and the Marketplace dining hall, with the blossoming trees bathed in sunlight, surrounded by basic tan park benches, in the airy, quiet courtyards outside one of the several older, traditional freshman dorms, and with the enthusiasm of my tour guide, who led us with great gusto across the thriving, animated campus. 
  These cultural traces, both human and non-human, stuck with me throughout my junior year of high school, and into my senior year, when I applied to colleges in hopes of finding the home of the next chapter of my life in higher education. On that campus tour, I felt at home, and my perception of this new place, or my sense of place (“the emotional, experiential, and affective traces that tie humans into particular environments”), made me feel like I belonged on University Green, and in the Student Center, and in the pleasant, sunny courtyards outside the traditional freshman dorms (Anderson, 2015, p. 53). It was then, nearly a year later, that I committed to Rowan University and began my journey into my new life; my college experience.
  
  Looking back, I had no idea what I had gotten myself into, as I first encountered Rowan University, the city of Glassboro, and Southern New Jersey as a whole. However, long before my first day of class, my orientation, my commitment date, and my first tour, Rowan University stood as a place of meaning in the minds of many other students before me.