Let's flashback to the first day of my uni life, which was on the 2nd Sept. That was my orientation day (Imagine UBC) , which was also my second time entering the university. I went to the UBC a few days before Imagine UBC day for an English test.Speaking about Imagine UBC, it was like a half-day uni trip which provided us brief introduction on the surroundings and gathering the first-year students under the same faculty together for games, lunch and speech sessions.It was freaking cold on that day, I remember vividly because it was raining and they still insisted to have ice-breaking session under the rain. That ice-breaking game didn't break up the ice bond between us, but freeze me out terribly instead.
My group leader, Cindy then introduced us with the different buildings and administration offices which were definitely useful to new students like us. The campus is rather big but fortunately all the lectures that I'm attending are located not far from each other and they are reachable within 10 minutes of walking.That's really important to me because I have classes scheduled one after another, and that 10 minutes is the only time I have to walk to another building.
To wrap up the orientation day, we were welcomed by the deans of different faculties with their decent speeches. There were about 6000+ first-year students commencing classes in Winter session 08.I felt like I was placed in a rock concert instead of a welcoming event, whereby the band leader will take off his shirt and yell to the audience, which was exactly the same scenario here, the President of Student Society took off his shirt half way giving speech and started flinging it around.Okay, that was just their style of presentation. Something really caught my attention took place when they informed a former UBC student,Ben Rutledge, who was the Gold Medalist of the Canadian rowing team in Beijing Olympic 2008. He was sharing his experience and fun joining societies and clubs in university because that's where he got an opportunity to join the national team for Olympic. Whoa, it was my first time seeing the Olympic Gold Medal in real, courtesy of Ben Rutledge.
That was basically the highlights of my orientation day. Let me share with you a little bit about Ubyssey.
You may be curious of me using Ubyssey instead of the usual UBC. Ubyssey is actually the UBC student-run paper,which is free of charge and being published twice weekly. I do read it sometimes and I personally like the survey part whereby they survey students on different issues. I once read about " 25 unfavourable things of UBC students", and there were several funny responds to it, like
"30. Plant Ops vans that drive right down the fucking sidewalk."
"18. That weird box under your facebook photo."
"6. A certain news editor asking people to write the joke edit."
"2. Old people"
"31. Happy people."
"32. Not being in love."
"33. Being in love."
"90 things to do before you graduate UBC"
7) Take a nap at the swimming pool between classes
19) Skateboard/longboard down all 5 levels at the Rosegarden Parking lots
21) Get arrested while protesting to save a pile of dirt
24) Get lost on campus
32) Drink a beer in class
61) Ride a bike to school
81) When someone is running to class call out “Run Forest! Run!”
These people are creatively funny despite some of the ideas might turn out to be silly.
There's a beach, farm ,botanical garden and a rose garden on campus. I've not been to the beach yet, otherwise I'd visited all these places, but from what I heard, it's beautiful. I hope it is, then I'll have more reasons to duple, or even triple my visits there monthly.
The Rose Garden
Irving.K.Barber Learning Center (Behind view)
Clock Tower
Walter.C.Koerner Library
I'm still accumulating more pictures on the campus, I think there are still a lot of places in uni which I've not been to, so I'll leave it for the next time.
I have an I-clicker which acts as a Personal Response System (PRS) that I'm required to bring to some of the lectures. What I'm doing with the clicker is that I answer the question posted by the professor and then click my answer and check on my vote status. Then the professor will end the poll and display the result in a graph form, while discussing to us the possible answers of the question. My participation will be graded and include in my results.I personally dislike the idea of using I-clicker though, mainly because it's pricey and useless.Seriously, I've no idea what to do with it after Term 1? I rather have paper quiz in class and hand in my answers for participation marks than spending RM 100+++ to buy a clicker to tit-tit-tit, click around for not more than 1 hour weekly, for the sake of that pathetic 5% of participation mark.
I-clicker
Lastly, I shall expose my student ID and bus pass before ending my post.
