The first day included a presentation on campus safety and transportation (basically preparing you to go around campus immediately before you did), a short and pretty worthless tour of Central Campus, and some placement exams. I had taken the math exam online earlier - here I took Chemistry and French. I got credit for Chemistry, and managed to get two semesters of French credit (since language isn't a requirement for Engineering students). Anyway, one interesting part of the tour was the beginning of the all-important graduation tradition which involves walking through a fountain in the middle of campus away from the fancy graduate library just so that we can walk through it again upon graduating in the opposite direction - toward the graduate library - to symbolize the fact that we're graduating. Get it? Any U-M students reading this (doubtful), forgive me for being a freshman and finding this interesting.
Later on, we broke up into groups and basically did icebreaker-type things with other freshmen at Orientation. And it was all related to questions we had about college. Which wasn't very interesting at all.
This was followed by a performance by an educational theater troupe on campus that managed to be both entertaining and informative. Bravo, guys! I think I liked it most because it touched only lightly upon the interpersonal issues that get too much attention and focused much more on issues that one may encounter with oneself - that is, discovering what you and I want to study, how to find some sense of purpose in the giant system that is college, and how to use what you learn to find success in life. All thought-provoking shit. Which is exactly what I need to think about. After that they gave us free movie tickets to see either the critical/indie darling Winter's Bone or the cringe-comedy Cyrus, starring Jonah Hill and John C. Reilly. Even though I was more interested in Winter's Bone based on the reviews I'd read, everybody wanted to go see the comedy, so I went to see Cyrus. It was fucking hilarious. But nobody else thought so! The point of the movie was to find humor in situations that are just uncomfortable as fuck rather than the ridiculous dialogue/slapstick that one would expect from a movie with John C. Reilly and Jonah Hill, which I guess a lot of people didn't get. I was seriously busting a gut throughout. My only complaint would be that the ending got way too serious, but I think that that was only because the tension between the two main characters that was the source of all the humor in the movie inevitably had to be resolved. Oh well. Other notable happenings on this day involved a brief walk around campus with my friend who I shall call Obamakid, in which I felt bad after failing to pay a homeless man but giving some kid $2 for bus fare. In my defense, though, the homeless guy was panhandling in a tunnel. That's a place where you don't give people money for fear of getting jumped, regardless of who asks you. Also, that night, I realized that the dorms are holy-shit hot in the summer.
Day 2 was definitely a bit more interesting for me just because it separated the groups based on the school they were attending within the university, which meant I got to learn about Engineering. The day began in the same fashion as the first, with a presentation that covered the very basics of finding academic success. Basically, an hour and a half of "don't cheat on tests" and "get good sleep". Then, we traveled to the Undergraduate Library and learned about the University's library system, computer services (a presentation which, to my surprise/chagrin, didn't deal with the horrifyingly complex "Wolverine Access", but only with things like wi-fi (which I believe is an unalienable right to all students regardless of location), computer repair, illegal downloading, etc.), and how to get involved with the University's many different student organizations. It would have been more useful if it had helped me learn which ones I ought to join, but alas, it didn't.
The pace of things picked up when we traveled to North Campus for Academic Advising, which thankfully focused on Engineering students. After learning all about engineering on campus (and I'm officially intimidated), I met individually with an academic adviser and learned specifically which courses I'd need to take to meet graduation requirements. The trip involved eating at the dorm which supposedly serves the best food on campus - which I think only owns its title because of the fact that it serves by far the largest amount/variety of food. Qualitatively it's not outstanding.
After this the night was basically my own. Other students involved with Learning Communities got there own private meeting while I reviewed some of the many materials given to me and finished a survey that was essentially just a detailed university census. Then, we went into the basement of the labyrinth-dorm and constructed our schedules. This is what it looks like:
It's a pretty good schedule, I think, save for two things:
- The Chem 210 discussion section on Monday should be Thursday from noon to one. This is an available section but it was booked at the time. I'll be attending this session anyway, so that I can get three afternoons in a row where I'm completely free after 1.
- I wanted to tack on a first-year seminar just for fun, but since my Orientation was so late in the summer, they were all booked. Which sucked. There was a philosophy course called "The Paradoxes of Time Travel" that was basically meant for me. Alas...
After I finished with this, I started showcasing some of the funny videos on my Tumblr feed (which is a joke, by the way, don't even go looking for it) and managed to come up with the winning name for our Orientation group of engineers: "Euclids on the Block". Not even an original name, but awesome. It came from this comic:
After this, I had a conversation with three awesome Asian kids about everything from rock bands to lucid dreaming to literature for several hours. Then I hung out in some kids dorm with a bunch of other kids where we discussed politics, of all things. I thought my mostly-left political views would be embraced on the most liberal non-liberal-arts campus in the state, but I don't really think that that was the case here. Shit, I'm a Commie. Awkward...
Day 3 was literally just waking up, traveling to North Campus, getting my schedule approved, and then going home. Construction was terrible on the way back and I ended up in a massive traffic jam that was caused both by the construction, and people rubbernecking a car crash. Pretty dumb.
Anyway, the University of Michigan contains less trees than the middle of the woods in backwater-town USA from part one. The number of trees is really the only thing linking my various excursions over these two weeks, which is my explanation for the title. Anyway, my last stop in this three-part post is Las Vegas, Nevada, of all places. I'll finish this later.
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