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