Orientation, information and humiliation (Zoë)

My O-Week began on Saturday, the 17th of February when I packed up my life at home in Shepparton and embarked on the two hour drive to Ormond College. I thought I’d be a lot sadder when I left home, but I wasn’t, which probably had something to do with the fact that I had a completely unrelated Tripod song stuck in my head, which gave the whole thing a surreal aspect.

College O-Week:
Basically, college O-Week was about finding as many ways as possible to humiliate the freshers. All in good nature, of course. We had buckets of ice water tipped over us early in the mornings, we had moustaches and monobrows drawn on our faces for the scav hunt through the city, we got to walk through the city holding hands in a long line, and we got to revisit the bane of my high school existance – the Beep Test. May I never, ever have to be subjected to you again, Beep Test. We had a toga party, a trivia night, we all watched Zoolander one night, we had a fresher exam, we got to run around Lygon street and do stupid activities like playing Twister on a board covered in baby oil. So it was fun, but exhausting. I actually found it very challenging, because I’m naturally shy and anti-social. But I was prepared for that. Also, I don’t drink, and so the activities that centered around alcohol did nothing to excite me. But again, I was prepared for that.

The best part of college O-Week was the night I wasn’t there, ironically enough. My sister and I went to see Damien Rice at the Palais in St Kilda, which was unbelievably awesome. This is the sort of thing that you can never do when you live in Shepparton, so it was an exciting way to begin my life in Melbourne. I’m really looking forward to being able to attend more events like this now that I live where the action is, like the Comedy Festival.

And that’s all I have to say about college O-Week.

University Orientation Week:
I actually really enjoyed my host group. Everyone in it was really nice, and I’ve seen a lot of them around campus since, which surprised me. My host was really helpful too, giving out such handy tips like avoiding the lifts in the Redmond Barry building. I ended up leaving my group in order to go and see some of my other friends. But I saw my group later in the afternoon, and it was still mostly intact, which made me feel guilty. Oops.

The academic orientation sessions on Wednesday were fairly useful, particularly for my science subjects, because they let me know exactly what I needed to buy (dissection kit, lab coat, microscope slides, safety glasses and etc). There was a morning tea for HPS, which was really nice, although it clashed with my Cinema Studies one. I showed up just as the woman finished talking, so that was slightly poor timing, but I think we were all there for the free food anyway. I tried to go to both morning teas to maximise the amount of free food I got, but I missed the Cinema one.

On Thursday I signed up to the one club that I joined. I wanted to join more, but a lot of them clashed with my timetable. So the lucky club was JWAS, aka the Joss Whedon Appreciation Society, which has been absolutely awesome so far. I love you, JWAS! If you don’t know, Joss Whedon is the brains behind such masterpieces as Buffy, Angel, Firefly and Serenity. Thursday was also the day of my scholarship lunch, which was basically free pizza for everyone on scholarships. (I have an Access scholarship – $4000 towards my HECS and $2000 a year for the next four years – which really helps a lot.) It was nice pizza, and we played a few get-to-know-you games in the System Gardens, and I got to meet some nice people. In the afternoon I signed up to the Age subscription, which is one of the best deals I’ve ever seen. Someone at Ormond worked it out – I think it’s about 7c per paper. Is that not insane? Everyday I feel so happy picking up my paper.

I didn’t attend uni on Friday, because I went to Torquay with my college. So if anything interesting happened on Friday, I missed it.

So that was my O-Week. Frankly, I’m glad it’s over. I cope much better with a stable routine than with crazy activities. However, I met a lot of nice people, even though I haven’t seen most of them again, and probably never will. I got a bunch of information about my course, and bought my lab coats and prac manuals and all those things, which made me feel a bit more prepared and ready to face uni. And of course, the large amount of free stuff is always a bonus.