Your First Year, Deconstructed: The opening session was followed by a panel focused on the first-year experience at Amherst. The featured speakers were (top photo, left to right) Chief Student Affairs Officer & Dean of Students Angie Tissi-Gassoway, Poler Family Professor of Psychology Catherine Sanderson, Charles Hamilton Houston ’15 Professor of Black Studies and History Stefan Bradley and student representative and neuroscience major Zaki Alaoui ’24. Sanderson illustrated hitting the ground running in the classroom by talking about her students doing empirical research in an Intro to Psychology course. Bradley cautioned, “Prepare yourself not to be the smartest in the room. This is the beginning of something larger than you.” Alaoui recalled his own well-rounded campus experience—participating in the Muslim Students’ Association, playing baseball, working in a research lab, studying abroad in the Netherlands, securing a summer internship in Boston and (this coming week!) completing his thesis in neuroscience. Tissi-Gassoway, meanwhile, described what the very first day on campus looks like and, when asked what they like the least about the College, replied without hesitation, “I call it magical and maddening.”