This week is O-week at university. You probably know that O stands for Orientation and gives people a chance to check out their buildings so they don’t get lost (that’ll be me), find groups you might be interested in joining and also get familiar with the way things work in uni.

I went in yesterday and had a ball. There were stalls operated by the different groups and communities and also by different businesses operating outside the uni but whose services will be needed by the staff and students. There were games and giveaways, wheels to spin and win stuff and I have come back with lots of loot.

I did a tour of the library, I thought it was because I know nothing of libraries never having been in one before (lots of sarcasm) but it turned out I did need to learn about this one. The gentleman leading the tour had already finished the same BA I’m about to start, he pointed me in the direction of the groups marquee telling me to go see Deakin Writers and mention his name. It turns out the Reserves Desk is self managed,  the books are reserved online and then placed in an area accessible entirely by the person wanting to borrow the book, I can then go into this area, find my reserved book and check it out by myself. Rowan was also very quick to point out the particular shelves of books I’d need and to tell all of us we probably didn’t need to buy books but could just borrow them.

Anyway, after the library tour I wandered into the groups marquee and had a ball. I stopped at every single table that I might even consider joining and talked. I joined three groups including Deakin Writers coming away with a swag of reading material. They had two sets of Bananagrams with instructions to make our names and take a photo for social media. Here’s what I did instead of my name.

And my loot! This first picture is miscellaneous stuff from lots of different stalls. I could have overdosed on sugar as most stalls had some kind of sweet for dipping into. I needed some USB keys and there are two in this loot, two lots of highlighters and also two lots of post its, I desperately needed more post its, especially this size.

This second lot of loot comes entirely from Deakin Writers. I bought the top copy of Verandah directly from the Verandah stall but the rest came to me as part of my joining fee. I have no idea when I’ll read these, I’ve been moving my To Be Read Pile into my ‘new study’ and made the mistake of measuring them…over 230cm! Yes, my TBR Pile is so big I need to measure it, it’s much taller than me.

I promise you’ll get more updates about my uni studies during the year.