"You are all lame hookers. Reclaim your childhood."

Just a piece of graffiti I read on the wall of a toilet at a cafe I dined at recently.

In the interests of regularly updating this blog, I am posting the details of what went down during the first two days of O week.

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Fweeeeeet! goes the whistle shrilly, and we all groan inwardly, knowing it can only mean one thing but hoping it won't.

"It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's Superman!"

That's the call that signals all of us to lie flat on our stomachs, banging our arms and legs against the ground and shouting "whooosh! whooooosh!"

The theme for O week is Superhero; all the student leaders dress up as one, and we all get to act like one on the ground.

This is O(rientation) week, when second and third years get to make fun of the "freshers," whenever and wherever they want. This is how we become accustomed to residential college life and meet new people who share our shame.

I moved in on Sunday, blissfully naive as to the torturous fate that awaited me. And of course I exaggerate, but only slightly. That afternoon we - all of us "freshers" - learnt what would become known as The Fresher Dance, a.k.a The Height of Embarrassment. It's a unique dance routine to the song Grace Kelly by Mika, which I had never heard before I came here, and now hear all the time.

Other meet ‘n’ greet activities included an “Amazing Race” around the college, in which all the members of each group (numbering 7 or more) were tied together and “speed dating,” both of which involved being squirted with water guns, which, we would soon find out, would become regular practise.

That night was the tutor’s welcome party, which was Harry Potter themed – for them. It was a really fun night, despite having to shout over the loud music, trying to introduce yourself to people, pronounce their names correctly, remember it and ask them what course they’re doing. I spent a lot of the night talking to people, dancing and trying to get other people to dance. It was also quite a learning experience, as we were exposed to some of the college party traditions;
-the fresher dance (ours, and that of the years before us)
-towards the end of the night, gathering in a circle and linking arms to sing “Holy Grail,” our unofficial anthem, whilst charging other people in the circle.

It went late into the night – past 12am – which made the next morning rather unpleasant (or more so) when we were woken at 7am by the blasting of “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go” through our wings and banging on our doors, complete with shouts of “get up, freshers!” Dressing quickly (in our fresher t-shirts, of course, a bright red thing that made us easily conspicuous in anything and everything we did) we were hurried downstairs to begin the day with fun and games (such as tunnel ball and passing a lifesaver with a toothpick in your mouth) that again involved being wet by water pistols for incompetence (or winning, it seemed there was no pleasing them.) But the true agony was yet to come – we were made to run around Princes Park (or the oval, in any case), whilst being attacked along the way by “superheroes” armed with thier weapon of choice, water pistols.

Our next big adventure (read: torture opportunity) was a scavenger hunt in the city that afternoon. But before that began, we would be truly humiliated by doing our “superman thing” on Bourke St, in front of Myer, and then performing our fresher dance, which was apparently funny enough to make most people line up on the other side of the street, point, laugh and take photos. Oh, the shame. The hunt itself was not too bad, and mostly involved photos being taken of us doing goofy things, like striking superhero poses on the steps of Flinder St Station and singing the Captain Planet theme song on that stage at Federation Square. Fortunately, all of this is mild considering that last year – I’m told – one of the instructions was to go into a book shop, find the Karma Sutra, pick a pose and re-enact it (obviously taking a photo as proof.)

Monday night was Trivia Night, which was tremendous fun (and not without having to strike our superman poses on the floor.) Our group was not drunk – in fact, only two people were drinking – but we seemed to find everything enormously funny or rude, which made the whole night fairly hilarious and jovial. The competition also included Pictionary and a fresher dance off. We were leading the points tally the whole night, but crashed and burned in the last round (which I believe was “sports”), scoring only 1/10 and losing by 0.3 points.

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Coming soon: a "tour of local establishments" (read: pub crawl) laser fight, bowling and a rubix cube party.

x
Just a girl