O-Week Hosting

This week I helped out heaps with the orientation program!

On Monday I caught the train over to uni all the way from home, two hours away. It was for the ‘Get an edge day’, which was basically so the new students could get to know other students starting uni in the same course, and the only thing us hosts were told to do was to talk to them and make them feel welcome. There really wasn’t any other direction. The free BBQ made it all worth it. We were given designated groups, indicated by colour coded stickers on our name tags, but that was only partly put into place; students were just getting into groups that were doing there course. My group merged with another group, since the students that were supposed to be in my group had mixed with another. This was actually quite good, it wasn’t just up to me to have something to say, and when answering questions about uni we could both give a little input. Later I joined them for Trivia, and I’m not sure whether they wanted us to come along or not, it was way later than the times they’d said, so many other hosts had left, but since I had heaps of spare time, I stayed on, contributing to about two answers, and the few others I did know the answer to others knew it all too well. Our team ‘Slippery Slime came third last, but were only about 15 points off from the winners.

After staying over night in Melbourne, I had to wake up what is quite early for me, at 6:30, to be at the University at 8. I went up to the Grand Buffet Hall, half expecting a briefing, but instead quickly got my t-shirt, baloon and name tags for my students. All of us hosts were cramped into North Court, and after waiting for about an hour, students started to come. Unfortunately the hosts on the outside were getting all the students, and those in the middle weren’t getting any. I only picked up one student, who was already a friend. We walked over to our meeting place which was just south of Union House. I picked up about another 10 students here, on top of the 5 I’d contacted. Within 10 minutes I’d gone from only one to almost 20! I started off by getting the students to say their name and something interesting about themselves, all I remember now is that a few of them played musical instruments. One of the people I’d contacted couldn’t find our group, so I got everyone to play the Human Knot while I went to find them. (The Human Knot is where people gather in a circle, put their hands in the middle and grab a hand without taking notice of who it is from. They then must untangle themselves in the hope of become one large circle (or a few smaller circles).) I got just back in time when they’d just finished and had a nice loop. I gave them a standard tour around the main block of the uni, and talking about other relavent buildings off campus when at that end of the uni. We got to the deans welcome just under 15 minutes early, so I decided to wait outside and sit on the grass and chat, rather than get everybody sitting inside so soon. Unfortunately the 12 Noon session became full, and when our group got there, we couldn’t go in. It was a bit of a time waster, I could have just taken them straight to the student services carnival and to get lunch a little earlier. I lost about half the group this stage, and I organised for those that remained to meet up at 1:30pm so I could show them how to view their timetables and get them to the 2pm Dean’s Welcome. I let them know there wasn’t anything else to do, and just offered to answer any questions, and since a few had timetable issues, (not being able to view it), I took them to the Science faculty office, and finished about 3:15.

At this point I bumped into an old school friend who’d had an irregular offer for Melbourne Uni. I wasn’t in the slightest bit expecting to see him, thinking he’d be at another university. I drank my baloon, with disapointing results, only squeaking for a few seconds.

On Thursday I took the train again for the ‘2 Minute Noodles is Not Enough’, which I helped facilitate a group of eight to talk about money and food. First I talked on cooking: where to find infomation on how to cook, what to buy, where to buy, etc. I was quite quickly scared that I would go through the possible starter questions really quickly, as I found that we had to move to money fairly soon. Thankfully this topic was much easier, having many more ways to go including transport, rent, where to buy general goods, textbooks, etc. We did not get onto relationships (not the kissing kind) this time because the heat made us finish early.

Best of luck for everyone with 2007 study!