UoA & Huia Residence O-Week

Hello!

I arrived back in Auckland to start my BCom degree at the University of Auckland. Classes start tomorrow and I am nervous as.

Things will be pretty hectic from now on (it's already crazy enough now) but I will try my best to upload on YouTube as regularly as possible, so please subscribe!! Thank you so much <3 I upload videos on beauty, life, and talks about random things. I am planning to upload travel vlogs as well when I get the travel opportunity :) Your support will be greatly appreciated.

Alicia J's YouTube Channel
Okay, so orientation week has just ended for Semester One 2015, and we will have Clubs Expo next week where we start admiring the presence of the many clubs offered at the UoA.

UoA O-Week Impession:

It was different from what they show you in the promotional videos, I'll give you that. Don't expect too much - my expectations had already been calmed down by word of mouth of my friends who had attended their faculty's orientations earlier, and it was obvious that it was not as "fun-filled" as was advertised. Nevertheless the O-week for the Business School was quite well-organized and informative, so the orientation day kind of did its job anyway. Some of the lecturers had particularly interesting lectures.

The UniGuides (senior students who volunteer to help out for O-Week) were friendly and helpful, and I definitely appreciate their effort and time to guide us around campus. However, I would have liked to get my free lunch for the day as I had every right to. I understand that it was for the interest of time that we had to avoid the crowded Quad, but still... -_-

Overall, it wasn't bad but a long day, definitely. I opted to skip the Toga Party for the more calming lantern festival, which I will most likely do a separate post about.

Huia Residence O-Week Impression:

I was far from disappointed - I have made so many wonderful new friends and meet so many people from diverse backgrounds in this home of 321ish students. Love love love being here so far. <3

My Huia experience for the first week so far has been absolutely amazing. The hall had the week packed with events such as The Amazing Race (which happened before I arrived), A Night in Paris Speed Dating, Big Night In (free pancakes), Sponge Wars, Classic Kiwi Barbecque, and the oh-so-fun Halls Day Out today, complete with inflatables, live DJ music, and more barbecque!! :D

I realised how unfit I was. :-/

The week ended with a fireworks display that also marked the end of the Auckland Lantern Festival. What an amazing view, right from my window :')

That's a wrap for O-Week! Uni starts tomorrow. Godspeed for all of us.
I look forward to what the future brings! Thank you so much everyone who has been a precious part of my orientation week :)

I am planning to do a separate post about the Huia Residence, so stay tuned! ;)

アリシア

University of Auckland Roadshow (ACG Day)

Hello! ( ´ ▽ ` )ノ♪

With my laptop gone brain dead (entering its third week of hibernation), trying to post anything with photos on this blog has been utterly irritating to say the least. Will talk more about that at the end of this post. Apologies in advance for the crappy and messed up layout :(

Yesterday, me and my fellow ACG NZIC students from February foundation and April Fast Track were given the opportunity to attend a Course Information Day (a.k.a. The Roadshow), where we attend two faculty presentations of our choice and have some morning tea in between with some UoA freebies! :D The Roadshow is exclusively held for ACG NZIC students, so we're definitely a more privileged bunch of prospective students :')

Courses and Careers Day, the University of Auckland Open Day, was just held last week. I attended but was very late and had unfortunately missed a lot of the events and lectures :( I really regret having come so late, but I got to attend one lecture and see two of the halls of residences that I wanted to see most, so that was a very rare and fascinating experience. But this Roadshow was not a substitute of Open Day, so my message to all prospective students: ATTEND OPEN DAY EARLY AND PLAN YOUR ACTIVITIES BEFOREHAND. Don't leave behind regrets like me.

Freebies: Ingenio et Labore cloth bag (one I failed to get during Courses and Careers Day last week), UoA wristband, UoA pen, and UoA highlighter. Orange juice from morning tea.

The beautiful and modern Owen G Glenn Building, home to the Business School (my future faculty?!) *fingers crossed*

So I chose to attend the Business School and Faculty of Arts presentation. All the presentations happened at the Owen G Glenn Building. I was very, very pleased with the Business School presentation - the lecturer was engaging, easy to understand, very smiley and approachable, and she stayed back to help a horde of students full of questions, particularly those who were too shy to ask out loud during the presentation, like me :P I was able to have all my questions answered (and all these answers I liked, hehe). Plus, my friends and I agreed that the senior student who volunteered during the presentation was a wonderful eye candy :3 All this and more made me stick to my first choice of pursuing a BCom, a far detour from middle-school-to-last-year-me's initial choice of BA. I plan to talk more about how this came to happen in another post.

Then we had morning tea, where they left out plates of small pastries and crumbly cakes and cartons of Just Juice (I have yet to drink mine up to this day - still saving it for that Juice Needed moment xD). During this time, 8 of the 200 clubs at UoA set up stands around the refreshment tables, and I 

was surprised to see that a club for Indonesian students in Auckland had set up a stand! The three guys manning the stand exclaimed in joy when I said I was from Indonesia, and they all immediately stood up to introduce themselves. I promptly called in my fellow Indonesian ACG minion Adeline, and she also was surprised to see an Indonesian club. They told us that this is the first club we should join as soon as we come to Uni, haha :')

The second presentation I attended was the Faculty of Arts. Unfortunately, this presentation came behind my high expectations - mainly because of the rushed, condescending manner the lecturer talked in. It wasn't just me - my friends also agreed. That definitely put me off, because Arts is a diverse and exciting faculty that has so much to offer, but she made it seem tedious, monotonous and about as exciting as watching paint dry on a rainy day. She didn't even stay back to answer questions to students whose questions were too detailed and plentiful to ask during the session (yours truly), so my questions are left unanswered. I know it sounds harsh, but I was just really disappointed. Had this been done by a more friendly and helpful person who didn't seem like she didn't want to be there (the whole time she smiled just once, and even that was a sarcastic one), my day would have been perfect.