University
My 18th birthday was actually quite a momentous occasion one way or another.
Mom and Dad had organized a barbecue on Sunday to celebrate because on my actual birthday, a Monday, I was to start my university studies.
For those of you who don’t know, the very first day at university is quite daunting because you are in a strange place and you don’t have a clue as to what the hell is going on.
You don’t know where anything is but you have to find your residence and move in and then you have to go all over the place to finalize your registration for the multitude of subjects and courses that you will be studying.
And don’t think that you can ask anyone if you lose your bearings because everyone is normally just as lost as you are or maybe even more so.
It seems like every student in the place who is not totally new had decided to stay home that day.
Either that or they are hiding away laughing at all the new idiots that are stumbling blindly around in ever decreasing circles until they disappear up their own butts.
However, in my case, I had one good thing going for me, and one bad thing.
The good thing was that Mom and Dad had put their foot down and decreed that my siblings were to stay at home that day.
Now this was not a popular decision among them but that was their problem - and a big relief for Mom, Dad and myself because the last thing we needed to have to do was send out a search party to try to find little brothers and sisters every ten minutes or so.
The bad thing was that Dad had worked out the order in which things were going to be done.
Now, Dad is the kind of person who will organize an expedition to the North Pole - via the South Pole.
I love him to bits but I am eternally grateful that I take after Mom in that regard !
So instead of making the residence the first port of call, we started as far away from it as possible and the second was literally on the other side of the campus.
And so it went on - we must have crossed the entire campus 5 or 6 times and each time we got lost, eventually stumbling across wherever we needed to be quite by accident in some cases.
We had arrived on campus just after 9am and by 3:30pm everything had been done as far as all the registration things were concerned.
Then it was time to find the residence and do the thing there.
Now here is a tip for anyone going through this process:
Get yourself sorted out at your residence first!
If you do that you will be among the first people that get processed and that means that you will have a choice as to which room and more importantly which bed you will be occupying for the year.
And a year is a long time!
And whatever you do you must not choose the room closest to the bathroom and toilet!
Absolutely everyone needs to visit there at least once a night and you do not need to be woken up at 3am with a human traffic jam right outside where you are trying to sleep.
Or trying to study for that important test the next day.
Another thing is that if you are the first student to book into a room you get first choice of beds and most times that is also advantageous.
By the time Mom and Dad left I was occupying the room right next to the bathrooms and would have to sleep in the bed nearest the door.
Not an ideal situation at all but....
