Heyyloo Blogger World! It has been a week since I have attended my first new student orientation at my University. I am going to Georgia State University which is in the city of Atlanta, its a very popular college in this state. Anyhoo it was a rainy Tuesday when I attended this orientation. For everyone out there that is soon going to a freshman orientation or if your curious, here was my experience.
So GSU is huge. Huuggee. That school can honestly be its own city. So when I first got there on that drizzled and gray Tuesday. I had a hard time finding the building. But eventually I did, I got my butt over to the Student Center East building and sat down in the waiting area with all the other freshmans. Now this school has some very posh and lux buildings and then some buildings are just.....not up to par. But it is a public college not private, so it is amazing in that aspect. The Student Center building was lush. High ceilings, glass walls, and blue couches, even a candy shop desk. It had it all. So the wait for sign in was long, but we got free breakfast on the bright side.
We were all given name tags and a string bookbag and a pen...but I lost the pen. Anyway, there is not a better way to persuade your incoming students then a dosage of free school merchandise, am I right? Afterwards we were broken into small groups and assigned to a different tour leader, after some unecessary speeches, the tour began. The tour was alot of fun. But the intensive walk...not so much.
This school has an impressive build and its not closed campus, so essentially this school lays out over the downtown area pretty heavily. I love how it is not your traditional enclosed by a fence campus, and that it is big with various buildings that sprawl across downtown Atlanta. We got to see the auditoriums, the various class buildings, the cool bridges and walkways that connected certain buildings, we even got to see the 5 floor library that houses nearly 4 million books. I know right. Blew my mind too. We even got to see the huge towering glass building gym, with its cool rock climbing walls and weight lifting rooms. Another cool area we got to see was the in school cinema. Yes GSU actually has a mini movie theatre in the building, free for its students.
After we had been finessed to this high peak by the tour guides, they had shown us all the cool and fun things in campus, we retired to a cushioned dining hall. GSU has multiple dining halls, we got to see the nicest one, which is the Piedmont dining hall. We walked in and were blown away. There were buffets of everything you can imagine. Pizza, fries, slushies, ice cream, soups, bbq, sandwiches, rice, pie, cookies, pasta, tea, coffee, sodas.....like woah. But the dining hall is mainly for the dorming students, I'm a commuter kid and I don't plan on buying a meal plan anyway. But it was beautiful and modern. It wasn't a classy dining hall, it was modern and hip. It had multicolored walls, hanging lights and glass walls.
After we had stuffed our stomachs, we headed out again in the rain to the an auditorium. There were many desks by different school clubs and organizations set up, we pretty much got to walk around and get to know all the free extracurricular programs on campus. GSU truly has over 100s of programs to get involved on campus. They have any club you can think of. Honestly. The most eyecatching one was the Spotlight program, a club where you pretty much help set up huge parties, events, and festivals in the school. I was impressed to find out that this program was so huge that they have had famous celebrities and rappers come perform in the GSU live theater.
After that stuff, the seriousness began, when class registration loomed over our heads. Long story short, the registration took foooorrreeevvveeeer. I got stuck in a predicament where my class timings kept overlapping. Sooo that took a good hour to fix. But eventually after that we all moved on to the financial aid lines. I handled my business there and got out. Finally free of the orientation. The whole event was long, so incoming college freshman.....beware. Orientations are lengthy. I was pretty much up since 6am and got home at 7pm. It really does consume your whole day.
All in all my advice for college orientations would be to dress comfortably, and bring every important document linked to your being. I'm serious. Bring your citizenship stuff, bring the social security, bring your ID, bring your college documents. Bring everything. It is sooo vital. In the financial aid step of your orientation, trust me, something always comes up. You can have it fixed right then if you have any proof or documentation. Just do it! Also on the other note. If you do go to a college orientation.....make friends. I did not follow that one that much. In the first half I didn't meet anyone of my interest, in the second half I did and it made the whole orientation memorable.
This was essentially my orientation experience, many college students will go through an orinetation day just like this. Alot of people brought there parents along, but honestly you don't need to. They separate the parents into another group anyway. Just come by yourself and have fun. Be talkative and really observe your college. You will be here the next few years. Make the most of it. And if you are going to GSU and you happen to tumble on to this itty bitty blog...hey....wassup.
I probably need to do whole other blog for a GSU tour honestly. The school is impressive in its hip and modern chic build. But that I will do when I actually get to the school, so I can get pictures and dish the truth about the campus. Well thanks for reading this long rant of my experience.
Thank you for reading!!!
-ISBAH xoxo
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