Okay, not literally (I’d be somewhat concerned if he did, actually), but he really gives off the impression of being a nervous wreck during classes, and that doesn’t help when we ickle first-year kids need all the help we can get. Yes, people… I started uni this week. The night before my first day, I was excited off my rocker about it. By the time I woke up on Monday morning (rather later than expected, I have to add), all the anticipation had gone poof, and all I wanted to do was get to campus and suss things out to see whether or not I’d hate things right away. And… I didn’t! Well, not until Wednesday, anyway.
Orientation Week festivities weren’t all that perky; free coffee (mmm, morning coffee. SO. GOOD.), fairy floss and sno-cones, and forging new friendships via Facebook followed by in-person meet-ups were the only thing that were perky, to me. Oh, and the sight of a man walking on stilts and getting tripped over by a few “unwitting” people trying to promote a newspaper subscription. Very much a lolleriffic thing to witness. I got acquainted with my classes soon enough (all my crap is spread out on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays), but the campus — despite being a small one — is a bitch to navigate around, even with a campus map. Some of the shining beacons in this place, though, are that the lecture theatre seats are extra-cushy, there isn’t a class I don’t have that doesn’t have some kind of male eye-candy in it, and we can eat in class. Yeah yeah, I sound lazy already. I also plan on acting outrageously camp in one week as a trial, and see where/what that gets me…
I have no qualms with any of my lecturers, or my tutors — bar one. He speaks thickly accented, broken English, is originally from Bangladesh, and leads my tutorial for my Australian history class (bad thing about it is, it’s a compulsory unit, and I can’t change tutorials. BAH!). We’re not even an overly large group — only about 20 in the class, maximum, and fifteen minutes into the class, after he’s explained in detail the rule about attending all tutes in their entirety, as well as the spelling of his name, his e-mail address, and his name again, and introduced himself with a thorough recount of what seems like his entire. life. story., he walks out of the room with all his crap, and doesn’t come back. Hello, hello pot? This is kettle here. You’re looking a little black these days, dude.
At least now I have an idea of how much I need to do to meet the weekly requirements for all my units; a hell of a lot of readings, additional readings, and summaries of textbook chapters. Tutorial participation is supposedly an integral part of our final mark… in other words, we’re meant to speak up and bullshit for a few minutes in one tutorial for the semester, about the subject matter and the readings for that week. Otherwise, we can shut the bloody hell up, feign interest in any tutes we hate, and still pass. Well, this is an exciting prospect…
Posted on February 29th, 2008 | Filed under Fun, Work & Uni |
Isn’t it delightful? I’m so in agreement with that notion, that I actually joined a like-minded Facebook group - I was warned against doing this by several lecturers at my Orientation yesterday (more on that later), but pfft. I’ll join it if I want to. And there are assloads of valid reasons as to why. A Quantity of Qualms, if you will. *clears throat*
- As a first-year student, they leave you to your own devices to enrol online, register for classes, and work out how everything works at UWS. Should you need help, you may proceed to call one of the three helplines that are available, but are not guaranteed a fair service without first waiting 20 minutes and then being answered by a swiftly-speaking girl who yells “HELLO?!” into the phone repeatedly, causing you to yell “I’M HERE!” back down the phone line until she inevitably hangs up even though she acknowledges that she heard you the seven millionth time you shouted. You then need to hang up yourself, and get a glass of water for your parched, aching throat.
- The website is one year out of date, and within three clicks anywhere on said site, you can find at least one mistake. The timetables for many units for Semester 1 are not finalised, even though online lecture/tutorial registration opened up on the 11th and students require finalised timetables in order to register for the classes they want. Several course and unit numbers are mistyped, and spelling mistakes are not precisely in abundance, but you can still spot them and squeak/growl/whatever.
- When you attend your Orientation at a particular campus and are greeted by a representative from the library, the aforementioned representative will proceed, in her five minutes of allocated presentation time, to take ten full minutes to show you one webpage on the university library’s website, pinpointing all the links and explaining their purpose, as well as demonstrating the use of a computer mouse. She does not explain anything about the library itself, nor does she indicate any possibility of a library tour, but merely idles on the website and squiggles the cursor around while at least four people in the theatre audibly yawn to express collective annoyance and boredom.
- You toddle off to the Student Centre to get your ID card. You fill out the application slip, and then ask one of the people behind the counter if you could get your card. People in the Centre on any given day can make you wait between five minutes and one. bloody. hour. while they slowly/quickly/efficiently enter all the mandatory data and go about fixing the camera that shouldn’t talke that long to fix. Once you sit down to have your photo taken, a minimum of three attempts must be initiated before they finally get the shot they need. Then you wait another ten minutes until your card is actually ready. On other days, at other times, things take all of two minutes to be done.
- Your textbooks cost twice as much as those that other people at other tertiary institutions purchase, even if they’re doing the same course as you. You look forward, with a little bit of acidic glee that can be misconstrued by lecturers as actual happiness and anticipation, to paying upwards of $835 per year for your books when other Arts students at other unis only pay around $450. You trawl over the noticeboards for second-hand textbooks, and the most you can reduce your prospective expenditures by is $200 for the whole year. Your lecturer for one of your core Arts units will then go on to admit that some units actually require more textbooks than usually needed, and as you walk away briskly, you can’t help but think: “What the fuck?! Why on Earth do you admit that?!”
- Your Orientation session, which is scheduled to go for two hours in the lecture theatre, goes for two and a half hours, and is almost completely pointless because anything they tell you can be found online, including academic honesty policies and whatever other shit they decide to vomit at you. Furthermore, online information suggests that during your Orientation session, you will meet and mingle with each of your lecturers and tutors, yet none of the tutors are present and half of the lecturers decided they wanted the day off. A fantastic Orientation process, really.
*sigh* Looking forward to four years here… really…
On the subject of Orientation, I had my session yesterday. Several of the friends I made on Facebook were there, and we all met up and stuck together in the very centre of the lecture seats. Two-thirds of the people undertaking the Bachelor of Arts didn’t bother turning up, so it was a fairly subdued atmosphere in the theatre, as the two point five hours passed slowly, to the point where I was slumped over the tiny table surface attached to my seat, almost asleep, until one of the lecturers cracked the most self-humiliating, lame, tragic Paris Hilton joke to try and teach us about the importance of avoiding ignorance. Moral lesson my ass. Just, please, never try to snap your fingers and exclaim “Oh no you didn’t, girlfriend!” if you’re female, extremely butch, in your fifties, speak thickly accented English, and remind me forcibly of my English teacher from last year. Please.
Socialising was the highlight of yesterday’s day on campus, and… that’s honestly about it. I didn’t actually digress away from the group and talk to other people (although I did run into a good friend from my primary school days - we’re doing the same course), but I figure that’ll be easy enough once lectures start up. And speaking of starting up, by now, all I want is uni to begin already — I’ve had fun these holidays, but now I feel like I’m ready enough to ease back into the routine of studying again. I’ve got three days off a week, 40 hours of study to do a week, and a relaxed but compact timetable. Good enough for me. :)
Posted on February 16th, 2008 | Filed under General, Rants, Work & Uni |
