Most of us bloggers seem to be thinking that O-Week is... Well. Over-rated. "Blah." I think Laura said? (correct me if I'm wrong!) Oh my it is blah. Very blah. Especially for us commuters, it's nearly useless. Yesterday was a day I was looking forward to - yay clubs etc! Maybe attend a lecture on something! Wooooot! - I joined three clubs, probably would have joined more if they were... Visible. I had to ask directions for 2 of the clubs I was interested in. And the intro lectures? HA. My friends and I decided we weren't going to hang around if the info was on the LMS, the first one we walked into, the lecturer was "...and after this session, you can find all this information on the LMS..." at which we promptly walked out.
So far only Tuesday has been worth it... Because of the freebies. Maybe the Host program could have been useful... I didn't bother with the catch-up thing either. And today, I am staying at this place I live now, where I shall read all day. It will be grand. Here is hoping I don't get a text from one of my new friends - "Shannon! Where are you?! They are giving away elephants! I'm naming mine Twinkles!"
Oh, the title's unrelated, but a pressing concern. I've heard a few too many variations.
Okay.
Well.
Trinity are having a HUGE party next door tonight. On a Thursday. 'Fair enough', I hear you cry, 'It's Seniors' Return Turn', or some such. But they seem to have forgotten the fact that they have neighbours. Who may like to sleep at some point before nine a.m. I have met a lot of lovely Trinity kids, and to be fair, they did just sing Tiny Dancer, which I may have joined in on, but I am tired and cross and feel about eighty years old in my grumpiness.
Oh Lord, I just managed to make myself sound about as much fun as a dead cat. But so be it, internet buddies, you can be revealed to all my grouchy secret angst.
Other than fuming at neighbouring colleges (fun fact: Ormond have a hate chant against us, as one of their students cheerfully announced to one of my friends. Great.) O-Week has been a blast so far. The slew of new friends as well as whatever word it is that denotes 'someone you've met once, bumped into twice and does the same major as you' is a blast, as well as having all of Melbourne as my playground. A little underwhelmed by the advice sessions offered at uni, as a few others here have mentioned, but that was a problem I quickly solved by stopping going to them and doing more useful things like eating cake on Lygon St, visiting other colleges, and sorting out just what my minor IS. It's 'Literature and Theatre Studies', for anyone anxious to be in the know.
Today was Clubs and Societies Event numero uno, and a blast indeed. I had to force myself to leave at something like the six club benchmark, so I could avoid spending all my money on memberships. Straining my memory, I recall joining; M-ASS, the Juggling Club, the MU Choral Society, the Musical Theatre Club, the French Club, and Unicef. Enough for one day, I think. Add finding out about Marxism rallies (now inked onto my hand... could be an interesting day) and the abhorred Young Liberals is all very interesting.
It's tempting to use this blog as a space to whinge about rubbish timetables and the Host Program (which I have deeply mixed views on) and how hard it is to find drink fountains on campus, but I feel like I should mention things like the impressive array of public sculpture I've come across, my joy at 10 x 2 hour Metcards, and the excitement of the moment today when I noticed myself speaking of college at 'home'. As well as a general note on how wonderful all my newly-met college buddies are, and the occasional uni acquaintance I remember the name of, in case any of them stumble across this blog.
If anyone feels like commenting on the indiginity of fresher dances and fresher shirts, the pain of IDFs, the questionable usefulness of the host program, or anythign else under the sun, please do. Comments stop baby seals from dying. Or something.
In summary, O-week is mad and delicious, Trinity is noisy, life is good, and Cara is tired.
Have a fabulous two a.m, remarkably attractive reader.
Here's some things that O-week might stand for (pfft to "orientation"!):
- "Oh no!!! ...er, hang on... Oh yay!!!" week
The ups and downs of timetables: mine's got one day which is absolutely packed and three days with only one or two lectures/tutes spaced really far apart... but then I realised that I only have 11 contact hours! Score! Thank you, Arts Faculty!
- "Oh no way! I love that show too..." week
Making friends - yayyy!!!
- "Oh...well in that case, I guess I'll stay!" week
Finding out why people go to introductory lectures - quick story:
The Students: *Shifting restlessly in their seats"
Lecturer: "I'm sorry everyone. This is a really boring lecture...but there's a free barbecue at the end of it!"
The Students: *Straightens up* "Oh...well in that case..."
Learning the language of clubs - another quick story!
M-ASS Rep: "Sooo...are you coming to our historical *wink* tour this arvo?"
Me: ... ... ... "Huh?"
M-ASS Rep: *Sighs* "It's a pub crawl. We just can't call it that..."
Me: "Ohhhhhhh"
- "Oh this better be worth it!" week
Signing up to Student Union apparently comes with perks...but for the moment, my hip pocket nerve's having minor spasms!
Camps - sounds fun and all but $165 for a weekend?! ...b-b-but we're students!
- "Ok that's nice but I'm really REALLY not interested. Really." week
Dear Clubs of Melbourne U,
If we're not interested in your club the first 20 times you ask us to join, chances are we're probably not playing hard to get. What we're really looking out for when we seem curious are the freebies! That's 'cause freebies are AWESOME!!! ...but they'll only get you so far.
- "OH WOW!!! You can juggle? I wanna juggle too!!!" week
Joining the juggling club...oh, and other ones too, of course!
I think this one's self explanatory!
Ps. The title comes from \"Lights and Sounds\" by Yellowcard
So I woke up this morning at (*gasp*) 7am for what I'd call a very mundane day at uni, the tours, the "welcomes", blah blah blah! I am happy to say that the highpoint to my week will come tonight at the M-ASS O-WEEK party and tomorrow night at the Melbourne Uni "Sexy Party". I already have my costume, pj's with "Sleep with me" written in bold on the front.....Maybe this is all too much seeing as we don't know each other yet...
So let's get down to it!
My name's Luke (am I supposed to write my last name?)
I'm an Arts student (of course) and I'm seemingly the last person to introduce myself.
I'm 19, I have an extreme interest in foreign languages (3 and counting!), not that I've EVER been been outside of Australia. Hopefully one day?
I have an extreme dislike for bad grammar, (really? You're that lazy you can't type you instead of U???).
And a bunch of about 1,000 other pet peeves and trivial annoyances that I hope you will come to love over the next year.
I know I'm such a cliche but i have to say it...I'm addicted to coffee, but then again what Uni student isn't? Feel free to prove me wrong :)
This is basically what I've spent my last few months doing, working, sleeping, watching Mad Men (does anyone else wish they lived in the '60's?), and drinking copious amounts of coffee. This may be shocking to many but I am thoroughly pleased to have Summer over (more of a Winter boy) and to have the first week of uni looming.
As you can see I tend to rattle a lot, but when I'm not studying or working I promise to take up as much space on this blog with my ramblings as humanly possible. Until then, I say au revoir mes amies!
P.S. I've decided to add the name of the song I'm listening to as I write this: Animal by Mike Snow. Check it out!
Right. O-week. I have a bone to pick with you. Your shiny brochures and pathetic word-of-mouth set me up to believe this week was going to be a fun-filled, alcohol-fuelled, friendship-making riot. I look around me. I SEE NO RIOT!
I have spent this week in a daze. I've been lonely and lost (both physically and metaphorically). Yeah, I did the whole walking around Union Lawn talking to the scary people in the white coats...sorry, tents. Sure, I finally worked out how to configue my laptop to UniWireless (after 2 hours and three different IT places because my #^*&!@% computer was being painful). Yes, I've consumed many a snag, drunk many a free drink, discovered most parts of the Uni and yes, I am getting used to it. Here's the catch: I AM NOT HAVING FUN.
Moving to Melbourne has been really hard and stressful. I moved last weekend, into a house in Carlton rented to me through the SHAP program. I have a wonderful housemate and another one on the way in a few days (God, it sounds like I'm having a baby!). My house is beautiful and I'm loving the freedom. I didn't think that I was missing home all that much, but I've found it's the little things I'm missing. EXAMPLE: I always watch Spicks and Specks and Hungry Beast with my mum on Wednesday night (as a sidenote, Hungry Beast is brilliant - watch it! ABC 1 9pm Wednesday nights. ABC 2 8:30pm Thursday nights). So, last night, I watched both shows with my housemate - that was really nice, but it wasn't like having my mum there on the couch beside me.
I also miss having friends around who know me. The real me. Not the "first week of Uni" me who is trying desperately to know what I'm on about and where I'm going. My best friend is here, thank God, and she has been my security blanket. I really want to meet new people, but of all the people I have met so far, I haven't clicked with any of them. I hope this will change in the first week of classes, as I start to get a bit of a rhythm going.
So, tomorrow, I am going to take a day for me. I am going to unpack properly and get my room in order (finally!), to try and get a feeling of control back. I am going to stay in my pyjamas, eat chocolate, surf the net, not go to Uni and just be me for a day.
Is anyone else feeling a bit...I don't know...blah? Or is it just me?
I remain, humbly yours,
Laura
PS: We bloggers should meet for a coffee at some stage. I'm a thinker.
Yes, it hasn't been that long since my last post. You have a sharp eye, son.
>.>
This post should probably be more to do with the first day of O-Week, I suspect, but hey. I want to complain about trams, and there will be groin-punchy for those who will not allow me to bitch. Also, I have nothing better to be doing, (except organising tomorrow, complaining to centrelink because they haven't been playing me enough for the last month, making my mum a birthday card, finding a job, working out my finances for the week, and on that note)... Let there be bitch.
I don't use trams much. I haven't had the opportunity, not living anywhere near the city (and not being allowed into the city, *mumble mumble*) so Academic Advice Day was the first time for me. My trammin' alone virginity, I guess. And that seemed to go well, despite my silly errors involving which stop to get off. I wasn't late or anything, and I only had to sit next to a few scuzz-bags. A bit nerve-wracking but you get that. This probably sounds weird to Melbourne natives!
Hmm. I just decided instead of complaining properly, I will organise it into some kind of dot-point form. It's your lucky day, mystery audience member!
- Tickets. I want to buy a Metcard. Hello, Metcard machine! How are you? Scratched and barely legible? That's ok, I can squint. Let me see here. Oh? You only take coins? That's ok, I... Oh. Oh. Um. I'll just get off at the next stop, and work out this Myki thingy!
- Myki. Now that I have "Topped Up" as the smiling lady on the instruction manual calls it, I shall board this tram coming, and all will be well. I have plenty of time to get to the uni. After all, I am in Bourke Street, and there is 40 minutes until I have to be there. Hooray! Having boarded this tram now, I see the closest Myki-majig is out of service. Ok, cool. I'll check the other one. No? The other. What about... And... Huh. No. Hmm. WHAT'S THE BLOODY POINT?!
- Tram Malfunction. Not dissimilar to a wardrobe malfunction, as embarrassing as it is secretly planned. It is also super fun when you've spent ages sitting about - absent-mindedly playing Tetris - not realising that the tram hasn't done anything for a fair while, and THEN the announcement comes over. Bring on the mad rush as you struggle to find a tram that is going in that direction, and then you're 10 mins late.
- People. Technically, this isn't a valid point. People are everywhere. But that wont make me like them, or enjoy having them fall in my lap when the tram jerks to a start, or vice versa... I was just about to sit down when the tram took off, sending me flying a little, with an embarrassing "MEEEEP" of surprise. The people around me didn't say anything. But I can tell what they were thinking. "Fuckin' n00b." That's right, old lady. I can read your mind.
The first day of Week-O? FREE THINGS.
Also, the host program. I kinda have mixed feelings about this, I mean, I think it is a really, really good idea. Veteran students guiding a bunch of first years. I just... It wasn't my thing. I liked my host student, but I didn't enjoy the company of my host group to begin with. I regret not sticking to it in hindsight, but when I lost them amongst all the freebies I wasn't too worried. I totally pillaged that area. Free Mi-Goreng. And condoms. And information for gay men. I have no idea how that ended up in my hands, but that's ok. It was free. But I digress. If I had stuck with my host group for more than half an hour, I would have learnt some valuable things, or so I am told. Fortunately the friends I made on Academic Advice Day showed me the essentials.
To conclude: I am a tram n00b who complains too much, the host program will be useful to you (especially if you don't have anyone to show you around!), and free things are totally freaking rad but get there while everyone else is with their host group unless you loooooove standing in lines... And maybe the free things aren't worth it?
I'm biased. I would say that the stress ball, pocket frisbee, flannel, and bottle openers are the greatest things I've ever owned.
Here is something crappy I found on Google. If it's yours, don't sue. Personally I wouldn't own up to it.
Meanwhile: How to keep people away from you.
Happy O-Week, internet! Regardless of who you are, my mysterious reading audience, I hope that the coming set of days are fabulous, whether you’re a current student, someone dreaming of coming to a future O-Week, or any other curious internet-o-phile.
I had intended to be riding the blog-train straight off the bat, but this whole start-of-uni scene tends to leave one with remarkable little free time, and even less energy! I had a glorious moment this morning when I realised that I had twenty minutes free after breakfast to crawl back into bed.
Oh – introductions! I’m Cara, going (obviously) into first year. I’m doing a Bachelor of Arts, partly because I want to do psychology and theatre (and literature and French and linguistics and *gasps for breath*...) and partly because I’ve not got a decided, definite ‘career path’, a thing which sounds ghastly. Arts seems to be a nice, flexible degree, especially with the Melbourne Model. I’m living in college this year, at Janet Clarke Hall. It’s the littlest college, and from my five days or so here, it shows that the size gives a close, friendly, laid-back environment. It’s fabulous. And apparently we’ve got the best food on the Crescent. I moved here from Perth, and am thrilled to bits to be living in a proper vibrant big city with charming laneways and imposing skylines and enough light pollution to remind you how beautiful the stars are when you can see them.
I spent my first handful of days before college O-week started getting lost around campus, mainly. Honestly – who decided to give buildings such identical-sounding names as Redmond Barry and Richard Berry? To say nothing of Raymond Priestly! I also ventured excitedly through the city as much as I could, bought a secondhand bicycle, blue coffee plunger and pile of shiny new stationary.
I went into the uni bookshop on Academic Advice Day to start looking at textbooks, but I wasn’t psychologically able to deal with the hefty weights (especially the Homer To Hollywood reader...phwoar) or hefty prices (Psych books in particular) so I started small with a tiny stapler. I’ll work my way up through the stationary and memorabilia sections before I broach the books sections proper, I think.
On Sunday afternoon, the rest of the freshers, aside from the small handful of us who’d already slipped in covertly, arrived at JCH for the start of Rode-O Week, a real mixed bag of laughter, solemnity and madness. I don’t want to give too much away to future students, but think dancing the compulsory Fresher Dance in the middle of Bourke Street, being instructed not to wash your fresher shirt all week (although some of us rebellious outlaws with some sense of hygiene and odour responsibility are planning an illicit washing-machine load late at night), and being generally welcomed. Thoroughly, kindly, and with water-pistol violence. I’m particularly surprised by how quickly us freshers started to make friends. After only a couple of days it already feels like we’ve been living together for positive ages, as the general consensus seems to concur. Then again, it is hard to do conga-lines on a tram while wrapped mummy-style in toilet paper and not start to feel close to the people you’re with, you’d simply die of humiliation!
Uni O-week itself starts tomorrow morning, and I should get my internet smoothed out soon enough that this post won’t become totally irrelevant by the time it gets online!
Goodnight!
It's incredible how things change so quickly. Three months ago, an ideal day would have been spent in relaxation, recovery, a state of blissful nothingness (a word?). Now every day that goes by which is untroubled by productive activity - which is all of them - feels like, for lack of a better term, a day wasted. Only last year I perceived myself as an enormous fish in a miniscule pond, occupied by over 800 teenage males. Now I sleep in the smallest room of a North-facing corridor occupied predominantly by the opposite gender. And having once lived in a city plagued by competing codes of rugby, I now find myself at the home of the football my parents have indoctrinated me to follow from a young age.
To be honest, my struggle will be finding consistency. I feel the only thing I am carrying on from my past life is a passion for linguistics. I hope my blogging will inform and encourage those others who too are experiencing or anticipating adapting to a new environment, as well as function as an intriguing medium for my own journey.
My name is Andrew, I'm studying French and beginners Spanish in the new generation BA. I love sport, socialising and clear communication. Please feel more than at liberty to leave responses - don't leave me hanging here, cyberspace can feel lonelier than a college dorm during semester break.
So...let's change that now, shall we?!
Sigh. You know when you have to introduce yourself for housekeeping and it's always inevitably awkward? Like "Hi, I'm Priscilla and I've been off alcohol for eighteen years." *pauses for the polite clap* But let's not do that. Let's skip the infamous turtleness and then you guys can find out more about me as I keep writing over the year, ok? ... I'm just going to assume you said "yeah, sounds like a plan!" so whoo, let's do this!!
Sooo, I'm Pris.
I'm 18.
I'm starting Media and Comm this year. I want to, nay, I will become a journalist. Just watch!
I work in retail and I volunteer for Oaktree.
I love Pokemon, manga, jazz and whipped cream (mmm...whipped cream!).
I hate alcohol, coffee and energy drinks so clearly, I'm gonna be the life of the party at uni! Kidding. I realise this doesn't make me the coolest kid on the block but meh!
I'm told I write really impersonally so I'm really sorry if I sound really cold and horrible but I don't intend to! Please don't cyber hate me because of that!
If you ever meet me in person, I'm pretty awkward at the start but that just means that you "just haven't met me yet!" Trust me, once you get to know me, good luck getting me to shut up!
... ...and here's where I'm lost for what else to say. I live at home? YAY for not paying rent! Oh well, it's o-week so I guess I'll have more to say at the end of the week!
Ps. I almost forgot! For lack of originality, I think I'm going to make my titles lyrics from different songs. It sounds like an awesome idea in my head right now but I might start cursing this idea once I can't find a song which matches what I'm saying in the blog... This one's easy, I guess: Michael Buble - "Haven't Met You Yet". Click below for the vid!
Michael Buble Music Video
Hi!
My name is Carolina*.
I am an arts student.
I like ocean-related things.
This is my favourite facial expression: 
I have had 2 attempts on my life from knife welding junkies.
This is due to living in Footscray, an animated suburb nestled in the heart of Melbourne’s west.
I want to join the Royal Australian Navy as a legal officer.
I am a food enthusiast.
I like photography.
My favourite colour is blue and I want to live on a houseboat.
I hope you have enjoyed the above partially interesting facts about me.
O-shit-im-starting-uni-Week begins tomorrow and I’m rather excited/nervous/I’ll-never-find-my-way-around/confused-about-activities/sad-im-so-old-im-in-uni/happy-about-getting-free-stuff about it. It’s the first day that I’ll have to get up before 1pm in a fair while hence I’m rather disgruntled-about-time-of-commencement too.
In slightly differing news, at first my timetable initially was horrid but now its ok.
Please enjoy this explanation in comic form.**
Fare thee well;
Carolina
* It is pronounced so it rhymes with words such as ‘ballerina’, ‘pastina’ and ‘Argentina’. It does not rhyme with words like ‘ocean-liner’, ‘take-away-diner’ or ‘great-wall-of-China’. Also, it is not pronounced ‘Calerina’ ‘Caralana’, ‘Caroline’, ‘Carolyn’, ‘Katrina’ or ‘Thanyalak’.
** Bonus partially interesting fact: I like drawing explanatory comics.
Number of posts found:
1327
