O'week hits the ANU, and students hit the turps

Yes, a week early by at least Victorian standards, but the ACT is in full O'week (Orientation Week) mode as a new bunch of fresh faced first years begin the unenviable task of locating things like the student admin office, the book shop, the dodgy campus bakery, the ANU bar, and most importantly, the local dope dealer. Make no mistake, the first years have their work cut out for them on this gigantic sheep station the ANU calls a campus. From my own observations, it appears the ANU bar has been the easiest thing to find so far. While taking nothing away from the youngens, the ANU's O'week is pretty tame by national standards, a fact that can be easily attributed to the lack of undergraduate students at the ANU. To be fair, universities like Melbourne, for which O'week is quite a large - almost intimidating - event, take in something like 40,000 students. The ANU, by contrast, only accepts around a quarter of this number of undergrads, so it is quite unfair to compare. When it comes to postgraduate students though, the ANU leads the way, at least on percentage, and quite possibly on numbers as well. But lets be honest, a university that fosters large numbers of over educated academic wannabees is not not exactly conducive to toga parties, boat races, and naked twister.

Since finishing my undergrad, O'week has largely passed me by without much thought. This year, however, my involvement with the Postgraduate Association (PARSA) has meant I have been right in the thick of things. Generally, research postgraduates like me do not adhere to the usual semester-based university schedule. This is because we don't attend classes, thereby alleviating any need to begin our degrees at a certain time. Coursework postgraduate students, on the other hand, do attend classes, and because of this, follow a semester-based schedule. So this week sees hundreds of new coursework postgraduate students starting their various Masters degrees, and graduate diplomas. PARSA is, of course, pretty keen to let them all know who we are, and what we do. Being the Social and Outreach chair, I have been quite the politician this week, meeting and greeting students at various functions.

First was the international students orientation day, on Thursday last week. PARSA had an information booth which I setup and helped with early in the piece. Then, on Monday night this week, I attended a "cocktail party" (for which only beer and wine was available ??), an event organised by student admin to welcome all coursework postgraduate students. Brett, PARSA's president, gave his usual slick 10 minute talk about PARSA, which is always impressive to hear (he is an impressive guy!). I then took hold of my security blanket (i.e. a glass of red), and worked the room handing out brochures and flyers about PARSA, and our welcome BBQ scheduled for Wednesday (i.e today).

As I have admitted previously on this blog, I am not a natural socialite. Quite frankly, going up to groups of four or five strangers and interrupting their established conversation to talk about something they probably care little about scares the shit out of me. However, after one or two successful hand shakes and brochure exchanges, I was working the room like I'd been doing it all my life. By the end of the evening I was giving serious consideration to an invitation to join a group on a pub crawl they were about to embark upon. It was a very satisfying night, which to be honest, was exactly what I needed given my waning enthusiasm these last few months.

While Monday night was indeed satisfying, today's "Welcome BBQ" for all postgraduate students capped off a great week of rejuvenation. Firstly, the turn out was quite large, which was a great relief given the O'week schedule was not exactly helping us. Best of all, however, was that many of the people I had met on the Monday night, came along to the BBQ, and all of them came up to chat with me. It was a very "warm and fuzzy" BBQ for me, and just what I needed at this time of the year. I guess, when it comes to volunteer work, it is most often these warm and fuzzy moments that justify the time spent. I hope I get more of these as the year progresses.

As for the rest of the week, PARSA has no role to play, so my only concern now is not stumbling over some 18 year old couple having sex by Sullivan's creek, or stepping in undergrad vomit. Ahh O'Week .. its class all the way.