Getting Orientated!

September 8th marked the official UOttawa Graduate Orientation day. What did that mean for me? A long day of meetings, talks, and free food.

Orientation at the graduate level is nothing like orientation at the undergraduate level. Instead of alcohol and hook-ups, I had meetings, hot dogs, and Pepsi. It was QUITE tame.

I started my day off with a 3 1/2 hour session for all English graduate students. Needless to say, it was long and boring. After hearing from the Vice-dean of Graduate Studies and like every other service at the UOttawa, I heard lots of "great" advice from current graduate students. By great I mean, if you are working on a thesis, the advice was helpful. If you are like me and doing interships instead of a thesis, all this information is hopelessly useless to you.

I suppose one of the problems with most general orientation sessions is that it aims for the majority and excludes the minorities. My degree (Educational Counselling) falls into this category. In my departmental orientation later that evening, they actually touched on things that were important to us, as oppose to being important to those lucky individuals writing a thesis (or whatever the plural of that may be...).

The BBQ was nice though. There was no alcohol, but it was still nice. A really good touch was upon arriving in the tent, you were given a color wristband that represented your faculty. You could then spend the rest of the BBQ trying to meet people in your department.

However, I didn't have much luck. Other than L., my friend, we only managed to find 3other people in Education. Apparently we are not a very popular faculty when it comes to general orientation!

The evening session was much better. Though most of the information had already been discussed in the morning, the food was much better. It was a wine & cheese deal and I was able to enjoy a nice glass of red wine. Yummers. :) Also, I was able to meet some people in Counselling. Though I have only seen them once since Tuesday (and that was today), I know that the more I see them, the better we'll get to know each other and hopefully (fingers crossed!) new friends!

Overall, orientation was kind of boring, yet somewhat helpful. I suppose the real test of time will be if it is useful in the long run.