Giggles and Musings

My life in well...... not a nutshell. I will be telling the world what is going on in mine (my world that is).

Monday, August 02, 2010

Orientation at Columbia College Chicago

I'm telling you, they should call this registration. I went thinking that I was going to get a tour and stuff like that, which though I have already had two tours I could use, but instead it was basically registration with a bunch of seminars.

When we got there in the morning, I was sent upstairs and was told to stand in a line according to the first letter of my last name. Of course my line was the longest. But it wasn't so bad standing there because there were things posted in the windows that said things like "5.5 miles to Obama's other house" and "78 yards from where Ferris started the parade" and "27 miles from where the time traveler met his wife". When I got up to the table they gave me a name tag and a blue bag and then I sent to take a picture for my Columbia ID. After that we went back to the first floor of the 1104 S. Wasbash building, which is the film building and apparently the oldest surviving skyscraper in the world (or something like that), and there was a speech. After the speech, we were split into groups and went to go do an icebreaker. I thought we were going to do one of the theatre icebreakers that I was used to, but all we did was the name game (say your name, your focus and one interesting thing about you).

After about 15 minutes we went back to the building and split up again to go to our seminars. My mom and I went to a financial aid seminar and then ended up siting through the next one, because the presenter wouldn't answer our question and the answer ended up being "click on this link". Then we went to a on-campus job seminar. The presenter there was also not very helpful, but afterwords we had an orientation leader named Caitlin chase us down the street and answer our question. She was very nice and energetic and a little more the type of person that I had expected to find.

On a side note, I discovered that I am more outgoing than most of the film majors. I think it is a direct result of my theatre experiences and friends. I never really hung out with the "film people," because there were none at my high school. I just hung out with the closest thing I could find. They were typical theatre people: outgoing and funny and creative and crazy and weird and awesome. To hang out with them you have to become like them. Not that its exactly a chore, because it all about expressing yourself. Besides all that, I was in IB Theatre (my hardest IB class) and I had to learn to get over things that were embarrassing and just do it. You can prepare all you want, but once you are onstage, you just have to go with it. Improv is key. Well at orientation, without even thinking about it, that training kicked in. I was nervous beforehand and I stressed about my outfit and what I should say, but once I was there I just went with it. I was just myself. I didn't feel scared or nervous anymore, because this was me and I couldn't do anything to change it. So, together my friends and my favorite class helped me be a more confident person.

On with the show, then we went to lunch. As I was walking to pick up my sandwich I broke my shoe. So then during lunch I had to walk 9 city blocks (7/10 of a mile) in one shoe. We went to a Payless and I wanted to just replace my shoes, so I didn't have to think about it, but they only had them in pink and I don't like pink, so I never would have worn them again. On the way back I had a small panic attack, because we had almost know time left, but caught a cab and made it back in plenty of time. Then we went off to pick our classes. First they talked about the required number of credits and types of classes and such and then they talked about film foundations which are the first year classes that all film majors are expected to take. They kept telling us that what we took was up to us and that we had to choose and be independent, but it turned out that we had four required first semester classes and so there really was no choice.

After we registered (which wasn't that hard and took some people way too long), we went to Grant Park and played Two truths and a lie. It was mildly shocking to me that there were people who didn't know what this game was. After that we picked up our Columbia IDs and were free to go.

At the end of the day it felt like a long way to go to click a couple of buttons on the computer. But I had fun and I met a girl who seems pretty nice and lives on my floor, her name is Hayley. After we were officially done, we went to the Columbia Computer Store and bought my film and Mircosoft office software, as well as an external hard drive. Then we popped into the Chicago public library and then went and had Giordano's for dinner. When I got back to my Grandparents, I crashed hardcore and ended up sleeping for more than 12 hours. All in all I'm glad I went.

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