June the 24, 25, 26: "It's your freshman year and your gonna spend the next four years in this town"
Ack, one straight week of Orientation. @_@ There was simply so much to take in that I don't know how much I'll be able to remember and post here but here I go.
Wednesday the 24th was my last day of job orientation and the plan was to take off as soon as I was done (so four o'clock-ish) and do the two hour drive to Boone before it got too late. I needed to be at App fairly early the next morning so no one really wanted to get up at five, plus Sam was coming along as well. Anyway that was the plan, however, as I type so often, whenever I make a plan it fails. Faceplant, crash and burn, epic fail, you name it and I have a plan that has (pretty much literally) done it. This was the EPIC FAIL plan for reasons that weren't my fault (oddly enough most of the reasons aren't mine actually, I just can't seem to plan what other people do). In this case I had not planned for the sheer lack of planning and organization that went into the job orientation. Seriously, people who run this? IF YOU ARE GETTING PAID YOU HAD BETTER MAKE IT WORK! Really now, for the past two days I had been bored, inactive, listening to girls jabbering away behind me in some of the most ghetto/lower class accents that butcher the english language that I have had the misfortune to hear, I should've guessed that you would mess up the actual job handing out.
What happened is that they simply hadn't sorted the jobs out into the rooms they had to go into so it took HOURS (and I mean that literally) for people to get their assignments. And some of them were pretty crappy as well, one girl who I had been talking to (she had actually said to me "I bet your wondering why there are so many black kids here?" not too unkindly and agreed with me when I said I was more surprised to see so few hispanic kids, no seriously that was odd) got some job at a medical museum. They eventually had us go into another room where the workers were re-looking up all the jobs on the computer (and as I was talking with the kid in front of me, they also had two copies of the paper spread sheets in addition to the two computers and of course they couldn't have all four workers looking up stuff at once, nope they had to do it in pairs) and it was already 4:15 by this point. They had started handing out forms at 3 PM( instead of two like they had planned) and we were usually finished before four which shows how behind they were. The guy in front of me actually got assigned to the YWCA that is in the process of being sold and had been told by several people that he would be working at the animal shelter instead. Thankfully he had the good grace to stand aside and wait, but I was amused to see that he looked like a mini CEO as he paced back and forth on his cell phone in a nice, tucked in shirt with a tie on.
The sad thing is that if they had sorted people into rooms alphabetically on the first day (well, they were also separating people based on which town they had come from but they could make that work as well) then they wouldn't have had that problem. Actually, they could have made this a mere two days since we wasted so much time. I actually read the book I brought with me twice on Wednesday I had that much free time (and believe me, it wasn't worth reading twice). Oh and have the people who are in charge of the rooms actually have a presence and know how to project their voice's. That would help a ton too.
As for me they still had Sam's name down but they accepted my explanation (god, it would have been so easy to falsify it if it wasn't for the fact that I'll probably have trouble with the debit card and I'm paying taxes) and I ended up working at one of the branch libraries. Keep in mind that for the past two years I have been volunteering for main library's bookshop, so now I get to go to another library and be paid instead, irony much? I talked to my supervisor Saturday (actually, she was out Thursday and Friday so that worked out perfectly for me) and I am now an assistant in the art studio there. So I guess I'll be helping the kids all day work with the various materials, there are worse jobs but I will be gaining more patience this summers I believe...
So I got my assignment, ran out, saw my mom and brother in the entry way, ran for the bathroom, and then we got on our way. It was fairly uneventful on the way up but we did have to switch gears and put on the blinkers for a couple of the climbs. Those roads are killer on my mom's car, at least I don't really have to worry about her making a surprise trip up to see me in the school year, but that isn't her style to start with. Our hotel room was fine but we had this weird shower gel/shampoo/conditioner despenser in the bath tub instead of the tubes. But, as my brother announced when he came out of the bathroom looking very disgruntled and wet, they were empty and we had to use the bottle shampoo anyway. Saw America's Got Talent, I had missed the Tuesday episode, and saw some interesting stuff. What is more interesting though, I thought anyway, is when I tried to link some of the stuff to shader later is that you can't actually view any of the videos on youtube. Maybe this is another of NBC's ploys to get people to use their website, still not working!
Didn't get much sleep Wednesday night (I blame drinking that coke too late...) and thankfully Boone isn't big enough for us (read: my mom) to get lost in trying to find App. We found the dorm I was staying in quickly enough (Cannon Hall) and my mom dropped me off, intending to find parking so she could go to the parent orientation meetings. I get out, get my stuff, walk off, and then remember I'm the one with the map AND the sense of direction. XD I don't think my mom got lost but I really don't know, I was a little more worried about what I was supposed to be doing at the time.
I will be making a number of comparisons between the App orientation and my job one and let me say first that App is by far the most organized group/school I have ever been to (and Animazement is second which is sad because they only hold it once a year). Everyone checked in first and, instead of assigning people rooms before hand, they simply paired up people who checked in at the same time. I think that worked well since A) They didn't have to search the lists and B) People could room with their friends (I was surprised to see just how many people were going to school with their good friends, only 5 or 6 other kids are coming from my old high school and they are all guys so no room mate for me there!). The girl I ended up rooming with was Samantha who was from a small town a few hours away (Canton I think...) and she was pretty nice. Only two other people from her school were going to App as well (I think most were going to WCU, she said that my friend shader would be meeting a lot of her classmates at her orientation) and then we went over to some other (ALPHABETICAL) tables to pick up a schedual, name tags, info book, and the freshman summer reading book, Three Cups of Tea. The person who signed me in was actually my group leader (they were called student orientation undergraduate leaders or SOULs which I thought was amusing, "I'm looking for my SOUL!") and then I headed up to the room. DANG that was a big dorm room, it might have been bigger than my room at home (or at least pretty close). It had two loft beds, big desks beneath them, a mircofridge, two wardrobes and some free area. The only problem was that the loft beds shook/had no guard rail. Actually, the souls told us later that there were to be no "purpling" and Samantha and I agreed, with beds like this there was no room for the guys!
After that my day consisted of a lot of meetings and lots of walking. We were split up into small groups to meet with advisors to choose classes (apparently my little group, group 14!, was the best one they had had all summer), it appears that you always have to meet with an advisor before you choose your classes for the semester. No complaints here, App is starting a new program this year (called General Education but henceforth refereed to as gened) and the requirements are so confusing! And when you add in major requirements, @_@. Thankfully I'm just taking basic classes this year, but I'll have to declare a major by the end of the spring semester, man I'm scared!
Anyway, one thing that was very nice at App was that the food was buffet style so I could eat all I wanted. Holy crap, I eat a TON! Seriously, that was the first time is sooo long I felt completely full. I never do at home, I eat my food, but I still feel hungry and I'm too embarrassed to ask for more. Or I'm at school/work and I eat all I brought and am like "Oh yeah, I'm still hungry." Being completely in charge of my own food will be so nice in college, and the dorms (as I found) have a little communal kitchen on the first floor so I can even bake some stuff. I think that being independent will really agree with me in ways like this.
After lunch it was testing (grr, I had to take the writing placement test, oh and here's a weird one for the books, my AP credit counted towards the higher of the freshman english classes so I had to take the lower one instead. Uhhhh, WTH?), meeting with department heads (there was only one other person this round who wanted to do creative writing, everyone else had this crazy idea to be a teacher...), more meetings, dinner (which was awkward with my mom, I had just been running around like crazy all day and I didn't want to talk so I came off as VERY anti-social) and then some free time. I hit up the university bookstore and discovered that they have a small young adult section and a tiny manga section. Sat down with the first volume of Tokyo Babylon and Orlando Bloom has ruined everything (a Foxtrot book) and stayed until the store closed.
Went upstairs to see the play Risque Business which was AMAZING. No parents allowed after some, um, complained before about some of the content (would you rather your precious kids get STDs from not putting on a condom or would you rather know that they have seen how? I kid you not, that is one of the things they did). I was with one of the guys I met ealier (Alex, I think he's cross-eyed since his eyes looked odd) and before the play he goes (after looking at his phone) "Hey you know Michel Jackson is dead?" No way! Man, he was just such an iconic figure just for all the weird stuff he did. It's so odd to think of him as dead...
After the show I went back to the room, attempted to make the bed with my roommate (wasn't easy) and then hung out with her and a few other people for a while. And I realized that I had made a mistake earlier when I thought that country and lower class accents were the same. They're not and I apologize for the mistake. A country accent is well, just that, the accent of someone who lives in the country. Like North vs South or American vs English. And I don't mind them that much. It's the broad, slurred, completely ungrammatical lower class/ghetto accent that I don't like. Seriously, when I talk to people I want to be assured that I am talking to someone with minimal intelligence, your accent does not reassure me.
So I hung out with them for a while, but it got pretty dark and I got bored so I said bye and left. I think I might have heard them laughing behind me but I really don't know what I would've done for that... I had been planning to go inside but since people were still outside the dorm I stayed out and played a pretty competitive game of four square. People kept swtiching in and out and it was pretty fun. Talked to some people, it was nice and easy going for playing a childs game at 10 at night, XD. After that it was shower time (it takes so much courage to take a shower in a public shower for the first time without anyway to watch your back, no I'm not kidding, YOU go try it!), hauled my mattress down to the floor and beddie bye! I realized though that the hall lights were left completely on all night long, I think I will suggest to them that they switch the lights to half light for the night to save energy...
Next morning I couldn't find the breakfast place (I was walking with one other girl I met on the way and she didn't know either) but I got food anyway. Two meetings later I was getting my ID card when I finally have a chance to check my messages (my mom had called when I was in one of the meetings and I had called her back as soon as I could) to find that she and Sam went to see Transformers and they would be back at 2:30. Which means that they left like, 5 minutes before I called her.
GRRRRRR! That was so annoying, I'm sorry mom that I had to wait half an hour to call you, I just couldn't do it. I told you I would call as soon as I could, and you guys said that you would be in the library, not the $9 a person theater! Gack, it was only 12:30 then and I was. so. bored. And hungry, I was really hungry as well but the only thing I could do was pack, turn in my stuff, and sit down to read Three Cups of Tea. Got like, half way through the book too, and then finally got home.
So the morale of this story is (and if you are going to college soon/know someone who is READ THIS WELL). FIND copy of your orientation schedule online before you go. PRINT it off. HIGHLIGHT when you will be in a meeting and then TELL you mother/father "you cannot call me at this time." Same approach as to AZ I guess...
Anyway, I know this is a little late but my job is just making me so tried, I'll be trying to catch up soon and put an anime review in in the next two weeks or so but no promises.
Signing off.
Wednesday the 24th was my last day of job orientation and the plan was to take off as soon as I was done (so four o'clock-ish) and do the two hour drive to Boone before it got too late. I needed to be at App fairly early the next morning so no one really wanted to get up at five, plus Sam was coming along as well. Anyway that was the plan, however, as I type so often, whenever I make a plan it fails. Faceplant, crash and burn, epic fail, you name it and I have a plan that has (pretty much literally) done it. This was the EPIC FAIL plan for reasons that weren't my fault (oddly enough most of the reasons aren't mine actually, I just can't seem to plan what other people do). In this case I had not planned for the sheer lack of planning and organization that went into the job orientation. Seriously, people who run this? IF YOU ARE GETTING PAID YOU HAD BETTER MAKE IT WORK! Really now, for the past two days I had been bored, inactive, listening to girls jabbering away behind me in some of the most ghetto/lower class accents that butcher the english language that I have had the misfortune to hear, I should've guessed that you would mess up the actual job handing out.
What happened is that they simply hadn't sorted the jobs out into the rooms they had to go into so it took HOURS (and I mean that literally) for people to get their assignments. And some of them were pretty crappy as well, one girl who I had been talking to (she had actually said to me "I bet your wondering why there are so many black kids here?" not too unkindly and agreed with me when I said I was more surprised to see so few hispanic kids, no seriously that was odd) got some job at a medical museum. They eventually had us go into another room where the workers were re-looking up all the jobs on the computer (and as I was talking with the kid in front of me, they also had two copies of the paper spread sheets in addition to the two computers and of course they couldn't have all four workers looking up stuff at once, nope they had to do it in pairs) and it was already 4:15 by this point. They had started handing out forms at 3 PM( instead of two like they had planned) and we were usually finished before four which shows how behind they were. The guy in front of me actually got assigned to the YWCA that is in the process of being sold and had been told by several people that he would be working at the animal shelter instead. Thankfully he had the good grace to stand aside and wait, but I was amused to see that he looked like a mini CEO as he paced back and forth on his cell phone in a nice, tucked in shirt with a tie on.
The sad thing is that if they had sorted people into rooms alphabetically on the first day (well, they were also separating people based on which town they had come from but they could make that work as well) then they wouldn't have had that problem. Actually, they could have made this a mere two days since we wasted so much time. I actually read the book I brought with me twice on Wednesday I had that much free time (and believe me, it wasn't worth reading twice). Oh and have the people who are in charge of the rooms actually have a presence and know how to project their voice's. That would help a ton too.
As for me they still had Sam's name down but they accepted my explanation (god, it would have been so easy to falsify it if it wasn't for the fact that I'll probably have trouble with the debit card and I'm paying taxes) and I ended up working at one of the branch libraries. Keep in mind that for the past two years I have been volunteering for main library's bookshop, so now I get to go to another library and be paid instead, irony much? I talked to my supervisor Saturday (actually, she was out Thursday and Friday so that worked out perfectly for me) and I am now an assistant in the art studio there. So I guess I'll be helping the kids all day work with the various materials, there are worse jobs but I will be gaining more patience this summers I believe...
So I got my assignment, ran out, saw my mom and brother in the entry way, ran for the bathroom, and then we got on our way. It was fairly uneventful on the way up but we did have to switch gears and put on the blinkers for a couple of the climbs. Those roads are killer on my mom's car, at least I don't really have to worry about her making a surprise trip up to see me in the school year, but that isn't her style to start with. Our hotel room was fine but we had this weird shower gel/shampoo/conditioner despenser in the bath tub instead of the tubes. But, as my brother announced when he came out of the bathroom looking very disgruntled and wet, they were empty and we had to use the bottle shampoo anyway. Saw America's Got Talent, I had missed the Tuesday episode, and saw some interesting stuff. What is more interesting though, I thought anyway, is when I tried to link some of the stuff to shader later is that you can't actually view any of the videos on youtube. Maybe this is another of NBC's ploys to get people to use their website, still not working!
Didn't get much sleep Wednesday night (I blame drinking that coke too late...) and thankfully Boone isn't big enough for us (read: my mom) to get lost in trying to find App. We found the dorm I was staying in quickly enough (Cannon Hall) and my mom dropped me off, intending to find parking so she could go to the parent orientation meetings. I get out, get my stuff, walk off, and then remember I'm the one with the map AND the sense of direction. XD I don't think my mom got lost but I really don't know, I was a little more worried about what I was supposed to be doing at the time.
I will be making a number of comparisons between the App orientation and my job one and let me say first that App is by far the most organized group/school I have ever been to (and Animazement is second which is sad because they only hold it once a year). Everyone checked in first and, instead of assigning people rooms before hand, they simply paired up people who checked in at the same time. I think that worked well since A) They didn't have to search the lists and B) People could room with their friends (I was surprised to see just how many people were going to school with their good friends, only 5 or 6 other kids are coming from my old high school and they are all guys so no room mate for me there!). The girl I ended up rooming with was Samantha who was from a small town a few hours away (Canton I think...) and she was pretty nice. Only two other people from her school were going to App as well (I think most were going to WCU, she said that my friend shader would be meeting a lot of her classmates at her orientation) and then we went over to some other (ALPHABETICAL) tables to pick up a schedual, name tags, info book, and the freshman summer reading book, Three Cups of Tea. The person who signed me in was actually my group leader (they were called student orientation undergraduate leaders or SOULs which I thought was amusing, "I'm looking for my SOUL!") and then I headed up to the room. DANG that was a big dorm room, it might have been bigger than my room at home (or at least pretty close). It had two loft beds, big desks beneath them, a mircofridge, two wardrobes and some free area. The only problem was that the loft beds shook/had no guard rail. Actually, the souls told us later that there were to be no "purpling" and Samantha and I agreed, with beds like this there was no room for the guys!
After that my day consisted of a lot of meetings and lots of walking. We were split up into small groups to meet with advisors to choose classes (apparently my little group, group 14!, was the best one they had had all summer), it appears that you always have to meet with an advisor before you choose your classes for the semester. No complaints here, App is starting a new program this year (called General Education but henceforth refereed to as gened) and the requirements are so confusing! And when you add in major requirements, @_@. Thankfully I'm just taking basic classes this year, but I'll have to declare a major by the end of the spring semester, man I'm scared!
Anyway, one thing that was very nice at App was that the food was buffet style so I could eat all I wanted. Holy crap, I eat a TON! Seriously, that was the first time is sooo long I felt completely full. I never do at home, I eat my food, but I still feel hungry and I'm too embarrassed to ask for more. Or I'm at school/work and I eat all I brought and am like "Oh yeah, I'm still hungry." Being completely in charge of my own food will be so nice in college, and the dorms (as I found) have a little communal kitchen on the first floor so I can even bake some stuff. I think that being independent will really agree with me in ways like this.
After lunch it was testing (grr, I had to take the writing placement test, oh and here's a weird one for the books, my AP credit counted towards the higher of the freshman english classes so I had to take the lower one instead. Uhhhh, WTH?), meeting with department heads (there was only one other person this round who wanted to do creative writing, everyone else had this crazy idea to be a teacher...), more meetings, dinner (which was awkward with my mom, I had just been running around like crazy all day and I didn't want to talk so I came off as VERY anti-social) and then some free time. I hit up the university bookstore and discovered that they have a small young adult section and a tiny manga section. Sat down with the first volume of Tokyo Babylon and Orlando Bloom has ruined everything (a Foxtrot book) and stayed until the store closed.
Went upstairs to see the play Risque Business which was AMAZING. No parents allowed after some, um, complained before about some of the content (would you rather your precious kids get STDs from not putting on a condom or would you rather know that they have seen how? I kid you not, that is one of the things they did). I was with one of the guys I met ealier (Alex, I think he's cross-eyed since his eyes looked odd) and before the play he goes (after looking at his phone) "Hey you know Michel Jackson is dead?" No way! Man, he was just such an iconic figure just for all the weird stuff he did. It's so odd to think of him as dead...
After the show I went back to the room, attempted to make the bed with my roommate (wasn't easy) and then hung out with her and a few other people for a while. And I realized that I had made a mistake earlier when I thought that country and lower class accents were the same. They're not and I apologize for the mistake. A country accent is well, just that, the accent of someone who lives in the country. Like North vs South or American vs English. And I don't mind them that much. It's the broad, slurred, completely ungrammatical lower class/ghetto accent that I don't like. Seriously, when I talk to people I want to be assured that I am talking to someone with minimal intelligence, your accent does not reassure me.
So I hung out with them for a while, but it got pretty dark and I got bored so I said bye and left. I think I might have heard them laughing behind me but I really don't know what I would've done for that... I had been planning to go inside but since people were still outside the dorm I stayed out and played a pretty competitive game of four square. People kept swtiching in and out and it was pretty fun. Talked to some people, it was nice and easy going for playing a childs game at 10 at night, XD. After that it was shower time (it takes so much courage to take a shower in a public shower for the first time without anyway to watch your back, no I'm not kidding, YOU go try it!), hauled my mattress down to the floor and beddie bye! I realized though that the hall lights were left completely on all night long, I think I will suggest to them that they switch the lights to half light for the night to save energy...
Next morning I couldn't find the breakfast place (I was walking with one other girl I met on the way and she didn't know either) but I got food anyway. Two meetings later I was getting my ID card when I finally have a chance to check my messages (my mom had called when I was in one of the meetings and I had called her back as soon as I could) to find that she and Sam went to see Transformers and they would be back at 2:30. Which means that they left like, 5 minutes before I called her.
GRRRRRR! That was so annoying, I'm sorry mom that I had to wait half an hour to call you, I just couldn't do it. I told you I would call as soon as I could, and you guys said that you would be in the library, not the $9 a person theater! Gack, it was only 12:30 then and I was. so. bored. And hungry, I was really hungry as well but the only thing I could do was pack, turn in my stuff, and sit down to read Three Cups of Tea. Got like, half way through the book too, and then finally got home.
So the morale of this story is (and if you are going to college soon/know someone who is READ THIS WELL). FIND copy of your orientation schedule online before you go. PRINT it off. HIGHLIGHT when you will be in a meeting and then TELL you mother/father "you cannot call me at this time." Same approach as to AZ I guess...
Anyway, I know this is a little late but my job is just making me so tried, I'll be trying to catch up soon and put an anime review in in the next two weeks or so but no promises.
Signing off.