Off to a good start

Staff writer

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Geovanny Lujan, a 21-year-old senior at Eastern New Mexico University from Albuquerque, came to ENMU’s Dawg Days nervous and unprepared his freshman year. Those are exactly the kind of feelings he and others are hoping to deter with the weekend’s Dawg Days celebration.

Lujan was the first person in his family to go to college so he had no idea what to expect, he said. His Dawg Days experience was welcoming to him and that is why he decided to be a social media coordinator for Dawg Days this year.

Dawg Days is ENMU’s annual freshman welcoming ceremony, starting on Saturday and will continue through Monday. New students can move into their dorms starting Saturday morning, then a community fair and barbecue will be held in the evening.

“Everybody seemed really excited and it made me want to be a part of it,” Lujan said of Dawg Days.

That excitement is a requirement of the job according to Carla Anaya, a 21-year old ENMU senior and Dawg Days counselor from Edgewood. The Dawg Days counselors started their training on Monday and since have gone from 8 a.m. to about 2 a.m. every day in preparation for the event. Anaya said keeping her colleagues pumped is part of the job.

“We feed off each other’s energies,” she said.

Desne Salazar, a 20-year-old ENMU junior and Dawg Days counselor, fed off that same energy her freshman year when she arrived for Dawg Days. Salazar said she arrived with a “too cool for school” attitude but broke and became outgoing because of her Dawg Days counselors. That attitude and the friends she made are what nurtured her independence as a college student, she said.

The friends he did not get are what made Lincoln Nora, a 21-year-old ENMU senior and Dawg Days counselor, apply to be a counselor. He said he was not interested in Dawg Days his freshman year and missed out on a lot of fun because of it.

“I missed out on some good friendships,” he said.

Friendship is a major part of being a Dawg Days counselor, said Ashley Nelson, a 22-year-old junior and Dawg Days director. Nelson said they spend all day together, eat all their meals together, and even occasionally nap together, so being friends is “very important.”

“We are a little family,” she said.