It Shouldn't Happen to a First Year! (Aimee)

It shouldn’t happen to a first year…
Picture this. You are alone. It is your first ever day of tertiary study and here you are at the University of Melbourne. There’s just one problem: you don’t have a clue where you’re going!
You’re supposed to be on the ground floor of the ERC. You’ve found the building easily enough, but you’re on the wrong floor. Looking over a banister, you can see all your classmates lined up outside the theatre. So near and yet so far!
After minutes (which feel like hours!) of running around the building in circles, while trying your best to look like you own the place, you find a staircase. Oh great, you think, this’ll get me to my class! Well, you’re right, in a way… Except that when you reach the bottom, there’s a big fat glass wall between you and your classmates. Hmmm…
In a panic, you try the door. Unfortunately, it won’t open – a sign above tells you that this door is for emergency exits only. Even more unfortunately, the noise has caused everyone to congregate around the glass – evidently, intrigued by the strange person on the other side and wondering what she’ll do next! Using an elaborate Chaplin-esque mime, you try asking for directions, but everyone shrugs apologetically back at you. Then, you remember: these are first years, with about as much idea as you have!
After a few more seconds of feeling like a very red-faced museum exhibit, you find your way back up the stairs, out of the building and through the front door. All your classmates now want to be friends… and who wouldn’t with such an entertaining specimen!? But, the worst is yet to come…
Once in the lecture, you decide this would be good time to take some notes. You wrestle violently with the book-rest, set up all your note-taking apparatuses and then, with one fatal sweep of your arm, knock your favourite yellow highlighter off. It rolls ominously under a chair in the next row. Suddenly, you face a terrible dilemma. On the one hand, getting down and grabbing the highlighter while your professor is still talking would probably be very rude. On the other, this highlighter is more than just the thing you use for colouring in – it has seen you through the dark times of VCE and brought you into the bright fluorescent yellow light of your future. Clearly, you can’t just leave it there!
But, getting down isn’t as easy as you expected… First, you have to do battle again with that damned book-rest! You awkwardly hand your new friends all your books and nosedive! This is probably the stupidest possible thing you could have done. Now, you’re in a position which even a qualified contortionist wouldn’t dare attempt! Your bum (if you’ll pardon the word) is airborne, while the rest of you is perilously stuck underneath the chair of the person in front. And still, your beloved highlighter is out of reach! There’s only one thing for it… You push yourself forward. This, unluckily, causes the chair – and the person sitting on it – to rise several inches into the air. You can feel the terrified student on top of you wriggling frantically – probably thinking they are under attack from some under-chair bogey man!
At last, you emerge triumphant, highlighter in your grasp! There’s just one problem… Everyone in the theatre has stopped looking at the lecturer. They’re all looking at you. And, best of all, seats away, so too are a couple of people you actually know from high school. Back in your seat you climb, wishing for a deep hole in which to bury yourself for the rest of the lesson – or preferably, eternity! Then you remember: even if such a hole existed, you wouldn’t be able to find it, because you’re still a disorientated first year!
It shouldn’t happen… but, it did. In fact, it happened to yours truly. Why then, dear reader, am I telling you about it? Well, really, I just want you to know that if you’re a first year in the midst of a mortifyingly embarrassing situation (or if you’re a mortifyingly embarrassed person in general, for that matter!), it’s not just you. It never is just you. And at least it wasn’t you stuck under that chair!
Salutations from your brand new blogger friend,
Aimee