A social butterfly's dream: recap of week one at college.
Speed-dating night, pool party, barn night and undie runs… All which make up the first week of college madness that maybe recognised as the equivalent of ‘O’ week for other universities… without the booze.
It’s coming close to mid-semester break, and we thought we should give y’all a recap of our first, exciting, social and somewhat misleading first week of college!
In such endeavours to limit the college’s ‘bad’ appearance, our first Tuesday night social was speed-‘friending’ rather than speed-‘dating’. I honestly don’t even know why they try to change it; people legitimately come to this particular Christian college to do what’s known as the ‘Matrimonial’ course anyway. On the enrolment form they even have a tick box list of the reasons why you’re at college from 1 to 10: ‘Good education, being involved in groups, sporting events… or “dating”. (I only put that down as no. 2) ‘If you go un-partnered by the end of your degree, we guarantee full-reimbursement!’ They may as well start selling themselves as a dating college.
But I’ve gotten off track. This speed-friending night was a really great time; the sort where you can’t remember any of the names of the people you were introduced to the day before at registration, and you have to awkwardly re-ask their names, or subtly listen to the person next to you in the line (Rhi) as they told them their name before it’s your turn to be introduced.
We actually had to dress up too; our theme was: ‘What I wanted to be when I grew up’. I mean – I had no idea of what I was supposed to wear. I ended up going as a mad scientist, borrowing a white lab coat off my auntie who works at Sanitarium. Bit of a rookie mistake though – everyone kept asking me, “So… you wanted to be a Sanitarium worker when you grew up?”
So that wasn’t carried out so well. But my hair and nerd glasses made for a good laugh. I spent about half an hour before hand teasing up my long hair so it sat out like a young Michael Jackson’s hair-do. It was such a pain in the butt to get out, I’m surprised the next day I wasn’t looking like Bruce Willis.
To top the night off, we all jumped on the bandwagon with the rest of the world and made a ‘harlem shake’ video. We really couldn’t pass up the opportunity with so many people in one hall, all dressed as ninja turtles, mad scientists, old people, scrubs nurses, morph suits, Mexicans and professional golfers.
Here’s a link to it if you’re interested:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz2ej_VIC6w
Wednesday night’s adventures consisted of a hectic pool party with zorb-balls (which we weren’t actually allowed inside) 3 or 4 giant blow up trampolines, a volleyball net and blasting music. It was so much fun to get in there and jump from one floating device to another with about 15 people crammed in it, getting all tangled. All or nothing. Only a couple of times did I almost drown. The zorb-balls that we weren’t actually allowed inside turned out to be quite fun to play volleyball with but when approaching distracted people in the pool became a bit lethal and almost knocked a few people out!
Saturday was fun dressing up in the barn gear for the famous barn night; one group of creative second years actually came as a barn with cardboard boxes and all the different animals. We participated in the cliché Peter Dixon Band’s usual round of songs: The Hokey Pokey, Heel and Toe and many other classics, finishing it all off with ‘Yellow’ by Coldplay. Classic for any child brought up in the local area having attended many of these barn nights.
At the end of the heel-tapping evening, we tried to all go to the pool which we weren’t really allowed to but it was tradition for after the barn nights in previous years, (apparently). When we actually got to the gates though, it started raining, and people chickened out. They just didn’t get how if we were going to do something it has to be in ‘pack mentality’. There’s strength in numbers! As an alternative, people ran down to the back oval to run around in the mud – with the left over 20 girls we all stripped down to our undercrackers and ran around the oval. It was a lot of spontaneous fun.
The rest of the week was quiet, until 7:28 on Friday night, the spiritual program for college students. Being a local I’ve subsequently been to this program for the last couple of years, but it was nice to finally be there as an actual college student, sitting beside my new bestie Miss Rhi.
So you might be wondering, why was this week all a bit misleading?
As much as this first week was a whole lot of fun, I somehow had this perception that college would always be full of this hectic social stuff! But now, 7 weeks in I’ve realised that it’s about creating your own adventures when the SAC team doesn’t provide socials that interest you, or at all; in and amongst the growing assignments that are becoming due way too quick! But this first week was one to remember, and I look back onto it with fondness.
Anyway, I’m late for dinner at the one and only cafeteria that College so dearly loves.
