Orientation and the Oven Saga

Orientation for me is officially done and dusted. It's been quite an eventful week! I've started meeting people from my course, become acquainted with the layout of the campus and have even had a dramatic battle with the oven in my kitchen (okay, so maybe 'dramatic' is a bit strong, but it makes the whole saga sound that bit more interesting than it actually is).

First up, I had a session in the Helix on Wednesday morning. For those of you who aren't familiar with Dublin generally, the Helix is a well-known venue which often hosts gigs, plays, musicals etc. And it just happens to be part of the DCU campus, which is really cool. Anyway, there were well over a thousand of us packed into the hall and we were given a talk by the President of the university as well as other staff members, plus we were treated to performances from DCU's Drama and Dance societies.

Next we got to meet our lecturers and tutors. This was good as it gave us a chance to hear about our course and what we can expect. The timetable keeps changing though, so I don't yet know for definite how exactly the days will be structured. However, I do know that Multimedia doesn't have too many contact hours. We will of course be expected to put in a lot of extra research and study in our free hours though, and since we have continuous assessment rather than exams, we'll have a lot of important assignments to work on. It'll be hard work and challenging, but hopefully it'll be good fun too. If you enjoy what you're studying, it doesn't seem like work. But enough of my philosophical crap!

Before I go any further, I must mention that oven. It's volatile! It seems like a pretty old one, and it takes an age to pre-heat. My first attempt at culinary perfection (ahem) came on Monday when I decided to make pizza and waffles. Yep, very healthy... I'm not exactly going to win MasterChef anytime soon. I followed all the instructions properly and still the oven burned everything. Yes, the oven did it. Not me! It was still edible, but it meant that my relationship with the oven did not get off to the greatest of starts. I had more successful meals after that, but I still don't like it. But who knows? Maybe we can learn to get along. Stay tuned for part two of Sarah's Oven Saga.

Anyway, back to my original story! All the School of Communications students were gathered together - that's Multimedia, Communication Studies and Journalism - and then we were split into our indvidual course groups. We met our programme chair and one of our lecturers and then some second and third year students spoke to us about the course and answered people's questions.

Today was a much more interesting day. This morning started off with a talk on Expectations of University Life. We were given some very useful packs containing loads of information on anything we would ever need to know about DCU, plus a free student diary, which was handy because we were advised to get one for our course anyway. After that I headed over to collect my student ID card. I now have a very unflattering photo to carry around with me on my card for the next three years!

I then met up with one of my coursemates who I had been in contact with online for the past couple of weeks. We hung around in the bar of The Hub for a while before waiting for the campus tour, organised by the Students' Union, to start. In the meantime I got to meet a few more of my coursemates, and they were all lovely people. We had a good laugh. I got to know more people today than I did in the previous four days! The tour itself took a while longer than expected to start, but we all had a good time in the end. Even though they ran out of goodie bags to give us. Boo hiss!

All in all, today was pretty busy. I'm looking forward to the start of lectures now, and although it'll take me a while to completely settle in and feel at home on campus, I'm feeling pretty good about it all so far. Tomorrow I'm heading home for the weekend to see my family and my dog, who I miss like mad despite only being away from him for a few days. It's just not the same without him running around the place! I also plan to buy a microwave before I go back on Sunday night. I'm not saying it'll solve all my problems, but it'll be pretty handy!

Settling In

I'm sitting here in my new bedroom in Larkfield, looking out the window at lecture halls and people walking by for orientation. Mine doesn't start until Wednesday morning, which explains why I'm not out there at the moment. I'm currently experiencing mixed emotions. I can't wait to actually get stuck in to my course, but at the same time I'm trying to deal with the overwhelming apprehension at the prospect of living away from home - even though, technically speaking, as I'm in Dublin, I already am home.

The weekend was a blur of packing and last-minute shopping. To say I was nervous on the drive up yesterday afternoon would be a massive understatement. I was gripped with a brief but very real moment of terror the minute my parents left and I was on my own in a quiet apartment, but I've kind of adjusted now. First impressions? The campus is a nice size (although I'm counting on getting lost for a while) and very modern. I immediately fell in love with The Hub (that's the Students' Union building). The bar is lovely and it just looks like such a nice place.

As for Larkfield itself, it's not as bad as I was expecting it to be. The rooms aren't quite as enclosed as people would have you believe and it's clean and comfortable. I've seen far worse! My bed is comfortable, though I did wake up this morning with a pain in my leg, which I always seem to get whenever I sleep in a single bed! Spoiled or what!

My only complaint is the size of the kitchen. It's true, you can barely fit two people in there. I haven't tried cooking yet, but I hope it works out okay!

I haven't seen all that much of my flatmate, but she seems pretty nice. As far as friend-making goes, I've been unsuccessful so far. There was a rave for first years in the courtyard of Larkfield last night, but although I hung around there for a while and spoke to a few people briefly, I didn't exactly click with anyone. Plenty of time I suppose. I'm not a party animal anyway, so I expect that my friendships will come through my course as well as clubs and societies.

The good news is I'm meeting up with a couple of people from my course in The Hub at lunchtime on Wednesday, before we meet the rest of our group properly. That should be a good chance to get to know some people.

My orientation finishes up on Thursday evening at six, so I might go back home for the weekend before lectures start depending on if there's anything happening or not. I don't know how true it is, but I've heard that the campus is extremely quiet from Friday to Sunday evenings due to people going home for the weekends, not to mention the fact that the bar isn't open. I'll see how it goes.

More updates on university life as it progresses!