I did the same, I dropped out of high school and skipped my graduation to fly 3000 miles to attend. I actually went straight from school in Portland to NYC, the

I did the same, I dropped out of high school and skipped my graduation to fly 3000 miles to attend. I actually went straight from school in Portland to NYC, then straight from the airport to the first day of orientation. I ended up missing the first ~45min of orientation due to my flight being delayed. They made it clear this was generally unacceptable, and might have resulted in me having to defer my 3-month batch, but in the end let me continue my batch because it was an extreme case (also this was much earlier back when it was called HackerSchool, I believe this policy has gotten stricter since then). I felt similarly to this author initially "wow they really would've made me miss a 3 month experience that I changed my whole life to do because of a missed 45min meeting?!" But with a few years of hindsight and understanding more about how RC works and how important the social rules are, I believe RC has a right to make this initial orientation mandatory. Theres a 1:1 correlation between people not fully grokking the social rules and communication styles and causing disruptions that have ripple effects on everyone's experience at RC during their batch (and for years afterwards). The potential downside of letting people enter the community without this onboarding experience outweighs the pain of drawing a line in the sand that defers a handful of people who miss the first meeting by accident.