first day at the university.
So, my first day as an English major at the University of Turku is officially over.
I woke up at 7 AM -- which was all kinds of wrong since my sleeping rhythm has been spectacularly ruined by summer -- had an extremely small breakfast, checked my bag a hundred times, changed my shirt a billion times, asked my dad if my shirt was alright, changed my shirt again, tried not to panic, decided that I hate shoes, ran my fingers through my hair like a mad person, decided that I hate everything, ran up and down the stairs looking for things... and then I grabbed my Doctor Who bag and my Lord of the Rings ring -- hoping to attract geeky friends -- and stepped out into the cool morning air, only to realise that there was fog everywhere. And not the nice kind of fog, more like the "I can't see anything and I really don't want to die in a car accident today" kind of fog.
Anyway, my dad drove me to school (my time machine works; I'm back in 1st grade!). I tried to listen to The Lonely Island, because cracky songs are the very best anxiety medication, but my dad wanted to have A Serious University Conversation with me. Isn't it evil how parents always get all serious on you in the car when you can't escape?
It wasn't really a conversation, though. He asked me if I wanted some advice, and I promised I wouldn't get a ridiculous haircut like he did when he started university. And then he told me that I should always, always, ask someone if there's something I don't understand. Yeah, I think that's the best advice you can get from a middle-aged Finnish psychiatrist.
After the not-at-all-awkward car ride, I found myself standing in front of a building, surrounded by shitloads of other buildings. But I didn't get lost, so that was nice.
I didn't make any friends on my first day. A girl with dreadlocks sat next to me and we talked (Dreadlock-Girl asked me if the seat was taken, to which I replied "No"), but she wasn't an English major, so I didn't get to spend any more time with her. Bye bye, Potential University Friend.
As we were dragged by our tutors walked across the campus and into one of the billion-thrillion-gazillion buildings, I saw my friend Saana (who is a French major) and waved at her like a crazy waving thing. I feel slightly awkward about that now.
Then we got coffee and cookies from the Anglica people -- Anglica is a student organization thing for language students -- which was nice. They also told us a whole bunch of stuff about the organization and how to join it and so on. All this was explained with a PowerPoint presentation -- as always -- and here comes the best part of my day: one of the PowerPoint slides, the one with all the "how to join Anglica" information, said something along the lines of We won't give out your personal information, we are not Mark Zuckerberg.
And, well, my reaction:
And, seriously. People on my f-list, could someone please move to Finland and go to school with me? Nobody likes TSN over here and I'm forever alone.
Oh, and I was sitting next to this girl with black nails and short hair, and she started talking to me. And then we bonded over our horrible sense of direction, and I was like We have something in common, please be my wife, but it turned out that Black-Nail-Short-Hair-Girl wasn't in my tutor group. I think her name was Jonna. So yeah, Maybe-Jonna and I didn't see each other after that. Hopefully I'll see Maybe-Jonna tomorrow because she seemed really nice and I NEED A FRIEND OKAY. I can't be at that massive school for five years without any friends.
Umm, yeah. The rest of the day was kind of boring. This student counselor dude (who looked like he could join a heavy metal band) explained some things about hard work and such, and, ironically enough, I fell asleep. Hard work indeed. Not very proud of that one.
And then we had some kind of tutor thing. Basically just getting to know each other. There's nine students in my group, plus our tutor Inari. They're all alright. There's this one guy who looks and sounds like a serial killer, though. He used to be a gardener, which makes the whole thing even more creepy because it gives me all these mental images of him burying bodies in rosebushes. And then there's this really skinny guy who looks like he's scared of everything, and I kind of want to hug him and protect him from the world because he just seems so vulnerable and fragile. (like Jesse! he even has curly hair!)
There was some pub/restaurant thing in the evening, I think, but I didn't go. There would've been like 300 students there, and that's too much for me.
Yep. This has been an unnecessarily detailed description of my first day as an English major. I'm tired already. That can't be a good sign.
I woke up at 7 AM -- which was all kinds of wrong since my sleeping rhythm has been spectacularly ruined by summer -- had an extremely small breakfast, checked my bag a hundred times, changed my shirt a billion times, asked my dad if my shirt was alright, changed my shirt again, tried not to panic, decided that I hate shoes, ran my fingers through my hair like a mad person, decided that I hate everything, ran up and down the stairs looking for things... and then I grabbed my Doctor Who bag and my Lord of the Rings ring -- hoping to attract geeky friends -- and stepped out into the cool morning air, only to realise that there was fog everywhere. And not the nice kind of fog, more like the "I can't see anything and I really don't want to die in a car accident today" kind of fog.
Anyway, my dad drove me to school (my time machine works; I'm back in 1st grade!). I tried to listen to The Lonely Island, because cracky songs are the very best anxiety medication, but my dad wanted to have A Serious University Conversation with me. Isn't it evil how parents always get all serious on you in the car when you can't escape?
It wasn't really a conversation, though. He asked me if I wanted some advice, and I promised I wouldn't get a ridiculous haircut like he did when he started university. And then he told me that I should always, always, ask someone if there's something I don't understand. Yeah, I think that's the best advice you can get from a middle-aged Finnish psychiatrist.
After the not-at-all-awkward car ride, I found myself standing in front of a building, surrounded by shitloads of other buildings. But I didn't get lost, so that was nice.
I didn't make any friends on my first day. A girl with dreadlocks sat next to me and we talked (Dreadlock-Girl asked me if the seat was taken, to which I replied "No"), but she wasn't an English major, so I didn't get to spend any more time with her. Bye bye, Potential University Friend.
As we were dragged by our tutors walked across the campus and into one of the billion-thrillion-gazillion buildings, I saw my friend Saana (who is a French major) and waved at her like a crazy waving thing. I feel slightly awkward about that now.
Then we got coffee and cookies from the Anglica people -- Anglica is a student organization thing for language students -- which was nice. They also told us a whole bunch of stuff about the organization and how to join it and so on. All this was explained with a PowerPoint presentation -- as always -- and here comes the best part of my day: one of the PowerPoint slides, the one with all the "how to join Anglica" information, said something along the lines of We won't give out your personal information, we are not Mark Zuckerberg.
And, well, my reaction:
And, seriously. People on my f-list, could someone please move to Finland and go to school with me? Nobody likes TSN over here and I'm forever alone.
Oh, and I was sitting next to this girl with black nails and short hair, and she started talking to me. And then we bonded over our horrible sense of direction, and I was like We have something in common, please be my wife, but it turned out that Black-Nail-Short-Hair-Girl wasn't in my tutor group. I think her name was Jonna. So yeah, Maybe-Jonna and I didn't see each other after that. Hopefully I'll see Maybe-Jonna tomorrow because she seemed really nice and I NEED A FRIEND OKAY. I can't be at that massive school for five years without any friends.
Umm, yeah. The rest of the day was kind of boring. This student counselor dude (who looked like he could join a heavy metal band) explained some things about hard work and such, and, ironically enough, I fell asleep. Hard work indeed. Not very proud of that one.
And then we had some kind of tutor thing. Basically just getting to know each other. There's nine students in my group, plus our tutor Inari. They're all alright. There's this one guy who looks and sounds like a serial killer, though. He used to be a gardener, which makes the whole thing even more creepy because it gives me all these mental images of him burying bodies in rosebushes. And then there's this really skinny guy who looks like he's scared of everything, and I kind of want to hug him and protect him from the world because he just seems so vulnerable and fragile. (like Jesse! he even has curly hair!)
There was some pub/restaurant thing in the evening, I think, but I didn't go. There would've been like 300 students there, and that's too much for me.
Yep. This has been an unnecessarily detailed description of my first day as an English major. I'm tired already. That can't be a good sign.