Orientation week, and then some… (Suzanne)

I actually already have a blog somewhere else, where I’ve already written five long rambly entries related to the first few weeks of school, all of which I’m just going to transfer over here sometime this week after a little bit of editing because I’m too lazy to write new entries.

So, this is what my orientation week was like:

February 22nd, 2007: Hello. I am here to update. I am supposed to be tidying my room. And getting books. And reading about the Australian legal system. But I don’t want to do that. So I am here updating instead.

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So. After arriving from Hong Kong and staying in a dingy motel for a couple of days, I moved into Janet Clarke Hall, which is basically one of the residential colleges. On arriving, I was greeted by a bunch of people dressed as pirates, because that was the theme of Orientation Week. Immediately after we got sheparded into a room, and were told to take an exam, the questions of which were things like “Draw a realistic portrait of yourself” and “Choose four (out of three) essay topics and write a 5000 word essay on them” and “Who is Glenda? Why should you never rape her?” (Glenda is the vending machine in the common room). So we all sat there, looking at the piece of paper with a WTF look on our face, and then the pirates came in, started screaming at us to scrub the decks, and squirted at us with water guns, and then we realised it was all a joke. They woke us up the next morning in the same way and got us to go jogging at 6 am. That was not fun.

There are a number of traditions related to O-week, as it is called, at JCH. One of which is the fresher dance. Basically, the upper years choreograph a dance routine for a certain song. The first years all have to learn it. Once learned, whenever said song is heard, at a bar, restaurant, mall, whatever, the whole year has to break out into the dance routine, regardless of who might be watching or what they might be doing. Every year has a different fresher dance to a different song and as long as you live at JCH you must break into dance whenever you hear the song for your year. The moves of the fresher dance are passed down from each year and each year just combines them in different orders, adding their own to mark there year and teach to the next set of freshers, and are based on people who’ve lived here before.

So we went bowling/lasertagging/arcadegaming yesterday, and they played the damn song (“I don’t feel like dancing” by the Scissors Sisters) four times. So we got up in the middle of the bowling alley, and started dancing. And all these people stared at us and took pictures and it was rather cool because it was a pretty difficult dance routine (we spent the first day of orientation rehearsing the dance all day) and the people who gathered around to stare all cheered at the end. And then they started playing the second year song, and so the second years who were meant to be looking after us had to start dancing too. It is absolutely hilarious to watch someone try to bowl and dance to the Black Eyed Peas’ “Pump It” at the same time.

It is also apparently tradition at JCH to wear your orientation T-shirt all week. No washing allowed. Ew. But at least we don’t have academic gowns like the other colleges. Long black robe 4 dinnertimes a week in dining hall with no aircon = murder.

There’s also a Rubik’s cube party (you wear mismatching clothes in the colours of the Rubik’s cube, and every time the song “You Are A Pirate” comes on, you have to swap clothes with someone else, so that by the end of the night you’re wearing everything the same colour), which was tonight (I skipped it to go watch the free concert put on by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl), a scavenger hunt, (which I skipped to could take the music faculty musicianship test), and trivia night which my team won. Yay. Oh, and a boat cruise party which you’re supposed to wear bad 60’s stuff to. People who are underage or don’t drink go watch a Shakespeare show instead.

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That was basically the college half of orientation (there were a few more parties and events, but they were basically more of the same). Before I move onto official university orientation, I would like to add that I found it really, really hard to live here the first few days because it was a huge shock to realise that there aren’t air conditioners everywhere blasting cold air at 15 degrees Celsius into every single room like there are in Hong Kong. And that you actually have to walk outdoors. The population density in Hong Kong is such that you can build these cool little connecting bridges between the skyscrapers so that you never have to leave your air conditioned building and can live forever in your refrigerated little climate control zone without having to see the light of day. I mean, sometimes they don’t have bridges, or they think that open air is actually a good idea, and then you actually have to walk in the heat and humidity across the road, but for the most part, you’re in a climate controlled cocoon. That was pretty much my transition problems in a nutshell — no air conditioner, forty degree weather. So I suppose it was a relatively easy transition, with not a great deal of homesickness or culture shock.

Anyway, on to university O-week, which I didn’t blog about in the original post because most of the fun stuff was from college orientation.

On Thursday the 15th, I went to international student briefings for the music faculty. I didn’t have to, but I thought I should. They were really helpful, since there were only about half a dozen people there (as opposed to a hundred or so for the local orientation briefing) so you could get all your questions asked and answered. Then I stayed off campus until the events in the quoted passage above.

Wednesday the 21st was academic orientation day, which was a complete waste of time for me, not because of anything wrong with the events, but because I only stayed with my host group for half an hour and then had to leave for orchestra auditions. Then I went to my law briefing, miscalculated the amount of time needed to get to the building (damn, it was far away), and missed half the talk. Most of what was left was the Law Student’s Society and the International Law Student’s Society and the Student Union talking. It ran late because the Student Union Rep talked for a long time, and that meant that I missed most of my music briefing which was immediately after, and ended up missing everything of importance and instead catching the end, which was — you guessed it — the exact same Student Union speech I just finished watching.

I never did find my host group again, and I skipped most of the other information sessions outside of the faculty briefings, like the library tour and the campus tour and the ‘how to live on your own’ sessions, because I’m not living on my own (I’m in college, I don’t need to worry about things like cooking or utility bills) and I’ve always felt that you never need guided tours for anything — read the pamphlets, sniff around, and that’s enough. Host group (all 30 minutes of it) was great, though — I met other music/law students, which I wasn’t expecting to find from just picking out a random music balloon on the North Court.

Thursday and Friday were clubs and societies days, but there were also several faculty specific information sessions — each of the core classes you were taking were introduced by the lecturers, and you got a quick rundown of what was expected. I felt immediately at home in the Music Faculty ones, and immediately out of my depth in the Law ones. I suppose it’s the size of each, and the fact that I’m not really all that interested in Law except as a backup option.

There was lots and lots of free stuff. Thanks to VSU, there is a LOT of marketing, propaganda, and bribery going on – they know you don’t have to join them, so they make it worth your time to do so. Take advantage of this, and wheedle as much chocolate as you can out of the Chocolate Lover’s Society before agreeing to sign the membership form. The same goes for any corporate sponsors on campus — don’t sign up with them until they give you free stuff.

Orientation week is also pretty bad for your diet, because all the *insertfacultynamehere* Student Societies will be giving you free junk food. Take advantage of this too. Shop around before signing – there are multiple groups on campus offering the same thing (especially with some of the sports things — there are multiple dance groups and it’s considerably cheaper to sign up with the union club than the sports club or the short course. Of course, the union group then never emailed me back about when the lessons were, so that probably wasn’t worth the money anyway)

Anyway, there are more details in the next four posts that I’m transferring over, so I’ll leave it here for today.