The first week......

Good evening once more!

Well, it seems the first week of that wonderful uni life (well, the first proper week with lectures et al) is over. 

All-In-All, it's been quite a good week. The freshers fair was a slightly costly affair (at a small £178...although £118 of this was my student posessions insurance) - It should be good though, as the £60 I spent on joining clubs and societies I think went on quite a good selection of sports, including Squash, Badminton, Wine-Tasting, RAG (that's Raise and Give, which you'll be hearing a lot about when you get to Aston - they're the resident trouble-makers who on the day of comedy night kidnapped our wonderful guild president (who seems to have many an admirer from the female side of the uni) and left him in a cage all afternoon before gunging him with left-overs), and Mountaineering (because I love climbing). Brilliantly, I seem also to have picked clubs which meet at different times of the week, so I've always something to do if I can't be bothered to do my work!

Do try and be careful at your freshers' fair though, for whilst joining as many clubs and societies as possible is brilliant for socialising, it can get costly and you might end up (like a friend of mine) joining a whole bunch of clubs that meet at precisely the same time each week...

On a more academic side, my first week of lectures has gone quite well. Surprisingly, I'm so far finding Contract Law rather interesting. Other highlights include Dr Tissington (who will probably kill me for not referring to him by his first name), who has to be one of the best lecturers I've met so far - he does an excellent job of making Organisational Behaviour interesting, and the (rather obvious considering I'll be specialising in it) Marketing. 

By far my least favourite modules of the week were "Introduction to Financial Accounting" and "Quantitative Techniques", in part because I can't stand accounting and wasn't really intersted in doing any more maths past A-Level, in part because quantitative techniques is so boring (as I already knew nigh-on all we did in the lecture), but mostly because my horrible financial accounting tutor has decided that we're having an exam in week 5, which *might* happen on one of the only two days I want to have free this term so that I can go to my old schools' award ceremony/mini-reunion. 

Anyways, I'm off to go not do some more work!

Andrew

More freshers fun, this time with paperwork (boo!)

Evenin' again!

Its been another hectic 3 days in the life of a fresher! Wednesday was a bit of a late day for me - the party on Tuesday night at the guild was great, despite the uselessness of Skepta not turning up. I spent the night with my new friends :) from flat 0 (they should know who they are if they're reading...). We spent most of thetime in Einsteins, which was great! Even though I wasn't intending on drinking, I had a couple of pints, which seemed to help improve the "fun-ness" of the night...

Wednesday saw the "school daze" pub crawl, which (being the type who cannot stand dressing up) I didn't attend...though judging by the renditions of "We love you Aston" as those that did got back to the guild (including one group who specially adapted the chorus to "We love you Lakeside", which I quite liked :) ) the night was well recieved by those who did go :). Annoyingly I didn't manage to get any of the paper and administration work I needed to get dione today...Which included getting my campus card to actually let me into Lakeside, as apparenly it's supposed to...

I managed to get all my paperwork done on Thursday though, and so now I've got everything done and am pretty much ready to go :) (except I still need coat hangers and can't find any anywhere...) 

The comedy night on Thursday was absolutely brilliant! we had 3 comedians who were all great - I'm not entirely sure they even managed to get any of their set into the night....the people in the front rows did an excellent job of embarassing themselves in favour of the entertainment of everybody else! I also went on my first taster session of the week on thursday! I went climbing with the Aston Mountaineering group, which was absolutely brilliant fun! I'll definately be signing up at the Freshers fair tomorrow! (sorry for the excessive use of the exclamation marks there, I quite like climbing). I also met some really great new people...

Friday was a bit of a rubbish day for me :( I had some random illness that basically meant I felt rubbish all day (and most of the night)...this unfortunately meant that I did nothing all day and missed the big party (which was originally planned to be in my flat but moved to floor 0 'cause they have more space) as well as the 118 ball (which is about the only fancy dress party I'd planned on attending in some time....) - apparently the party was great, which just makes it a bit more of a bummer that I missed it :(

Either way, life moves on and I felt much better when I woke up at 11:45 this morning...I went to the basketball taster sesstion in the afternoon (and ended up entirely shattered, I don't know if I want to join at £20 for the year now...), then going (well, trying to) climbing with a brilliant new friend  met at climbing on thursday...sadly we had to pay for the climbing wall and had no money so that idea didn't really work, so we went into town instead...I was going to go to the MOS night at the guild tonight but ended up not bothering as I don't have a ticket or any cash to buy said ticket....

Oh well, tomorrow is the freshers fair so I guess I'll meet a load of new people there...I can't decide what to sign up for though...so far I've got RAG (because its free...) and Aston Mountaineering and maybes on Tennis, Squash, Badminton (spotted a pattern yet?), Table Tennis, and Basketball - might go for the Biscuit Society too...

Oh well, 'till next time,

Andrew

Freshers Week Fun

Good Evening again!

It's been a bit hectic recently with all this settling in stuff, hence the lack of posts over the weekend and start of the week. Everybody seems to have settled in, and I've managed to finally remember at least 5 of the names I've been told since 

Each flat has been allocated an "Aston Auntie", whose sole purpose seems to be to get quite drunk and make sure that everybody has a great time, which they seem to be doing brilliantly so far! I've met loads of people from my flat and from the block (Lakeside C, by the way). The sessions that the Aunties arrange every night have been great for making new friends from the other flats - mostly by making sure that everybody is doin well only at losing drinking games :P

The FresherMania nights at the guild have been great too! Saturdays mass-clubbing-party-thing was great considering I'm not usually into clubbing or the art of drunken jumping around in a room full of other people...I met loads of new friends too...Sunday evening just about every flat from blocks A-C was represented by at least one person piling into my flats kitchen before the guild beach party, resulting in meeting (and promptly forgetting the names of) just about everyone living around me - we got a mention in the Wotsup  newsletter apparently too. I went with a few of the people from C0 and we hung out in Einsteins learning a bunch of drinking games from the aunties...

Tonight should be good too - we're all going down to C0 again and having a few drinks before the guild party where apaprently Skepta is playing live, so everyones been trying to learn the "Rolex sweep all day"...no doubt I'll end up being dragged into that one too :P

I had enrolment and the "welcome to aston" and "welcome to aston business school" presentations yesterday - important, but slightly boring to be honest :p - still, at least I know where to go if I need help now (usually the undergraduate office). Enrolment was probably the most boring part of the day though - thisconsisted of waiting in a queue for 35 minutes, showing the enrolment guy (there was more than one, just to clarify) my driving licence, waiting 5 mnutes while he clicked buttons, saying that my tuition fees were in fact baing paid by the SLC, and then being told to go to the 4th floor to collect my ID card (which took another 35 minutes and doesn't even work...)

More interesting was the actual introduction to my course, which I had this morning. Basically the head of undergraduate marketing (not her official role, but I've forgotten what her official role was) went through the course and what we'd be learning, what we;d be expected to do, who'd be teaching us, and the usual stuff about who to go to for help and bigging up the uni (Aston is, for reference, the best!). The library intro talk was also very good - they went through exactly how to do everything, the online system (which is very good), and the usual stuff about fines (which are quite steep, so I'd best be careful!)

Anyway, I think I've probably succeeded in boring you to death now, so I'm off to go do the washing up and find something to do with myself tomorrow!

Till next time,

Andrew 

One day and a couple of nights left...

Good evening once again!

As I write to you on what is proving to be a rather cold autumn evening, I find myself walking from my home town of Thame, the 45 minute walk to the pub in Long Crendon (a nearby village much smaller than Thame, for what will be (I think) the fourth last time I will see my friends before we all leave for uni.

Now that I have almost finished the horrible process of clearing and tidying my bedroom of the somewhat vast amount of paper and junk that has built up as a result of not cleaning properly for almost 4 years and the packing process is almost complete, the thought that on saturday I will essentially be leaving behind my old life and current friends and moving to the top of the M40 has seemingly chosen to "hit home".

There are a number of reasons why moving to Birmingham doesn't really bother me. Other than the fact that I quite like Birmingham and am rather looking forward to life in a city, I am only 80 or 90 miles from home - a distance easily traversed by the cheapest of train and coach services, and a mere step compared to the thousands of miles many students travel just to go to a good uni. This means it is exceptionally easy to sneak back to my hometown and surprise one of my non-uni-going friends for the day. This in addition to the fact that I am already planning my first trip back to attend my 6th forms annual "mini-reunion" and A-Level certificate presentation.

However, a number of things are also causing me some small amount of stress. My primary concern currently is that the current balance of my bank account is worryingly low, and will continue to be until the final payment from my part-time job comes through in the middle of freshers week - this leaves me with a slight dilemma over what to do in between. Secondly, I've only been to Birmingham twice, and the only other city I have visited is Oxford. This means that despite my generally good sense of direction and the wealth of information available to me, I have absolutely no idea where I'm going, nor where anything is.

And finally, I don't actually know anybody else who is going to either Aston or one of the other Birmingham unis. Other than the few people I have spoken to from the excellent Student Rooms forums (I'll put a link in the sidebar), I don't even know any names. This, however, is not too much of a problem, as I'm sure I'm in a similar position to a lot of other people, and I'm quite good at making friends, so I'm sure both myself and everybody else will be fine soon enough.

Overall though, I'm quite excited!

I have now reached Long Crendon and will begin the process of waiting for friends to arrive, so i will take the opportunity now to say congratulations for reading this far through my ramblings, and have a good night! I'm off to have a great evening with my friends, I'll post again soon.

Andrew

Sent from my Windows Mobile® phone.

Test E-Mail Post

Evening all (again!)

 

This post can pretty much be ignored, I'm just testing out e-mailing posts in - if it works, expect to see a lot of new posts from my mobile in the future!

 

Andrew

The ubiquitous "first post"

Good evening everyone!

So, it seems I've finally acquired my first blog and (after some considerable time) have decided on its subject, which, as you may have already guessed, it my first year of uni at Aston...

I'm still waiting for "admin" rights over the blog so that I can spend the usual day-and-a-half setting everything up and making it all look "quite good"...

It's tuesday evening now, which means I've got just four days until the big day most call moving in or out. I've spent the last two days working through the mountain that is the last 6 years of stuff that's accumulated in my room (and I reckon I've a good day or two to go yet, unfortunately), but that's for another blog).

Worryingly, the small large pile of stuff accumulating in my living room is building up quickly, and seems to almost have reached the volume of the boot of my Dad's car (which being a rather large estate, isn't an easy task) - and I'm yet to add my clothes and the contents of my wardrobe (don't ask) and bookshelf to the mix.

Anyway, I imagine I've been talking junk for long enough now, so I'll be back in a day or two to tell you more about my prep for what is supposed to be the first of the best 4 years of my life...

Andrew