Post-Orientation Post

Ok, ok, so sorry I missed my Friday window of opportunity to put up a post. So instead, I am sitting here on my last Saturday typing up a quick update of the past week shenanigans. So here we go.

ORIENTATION!

So on Tuesday, the day started off with making my way to the school (for the first time since my interview) at about 7:15 in the morning. It was pretty easy to find since all I had to do was pretty much follow all of the out of state cars.

Upon checking in, I was told to check in with the part of the admissions office (I'm assuming since they never officially checked off that I had completed my Bachelor's degree) and then they told me that they were still waiting on my transcripts from one of the Valley's community colleges here. I said that was interesting considering I'd never even attended there. Since that was a mistake, they opened up my transcripts on the computer and pretty much said "just kidding, you're free to go."

So I finished checking in, picked up orientation schedules, got a free flash drive, and had my picture taken for my student ID.

I wore a blazer (with jeans) and everything for this picture and you can't even tell under that pile of hair. Oh well.

The rest of the day consisted of them feeding us breakfast, sitting through lots of people explaining policies, etc. to us, them feeding us lunch, sitting through some more people talking, and then a break until 5 which is when we had our optometry school mixer and we finally got to really see who was all in our class (the Dental students and many of the other grad program's students were there as well...which mainly means there was just a lot of people there). They fed us again, we introduced ourselves, and then went on our merry way. 

Wednesday we showed up again in the morning and got to hear about every single class that we will be taking for the next four years...which wasn't intimidating or overwhelming at all (sarcasm). After that scary talk, they fed us more food (we got really spoiled here) and then got taken to a class room with EVERYONE'S equipment all laid out on the tables. We got called a few at a time and had to go through every single piece of our equipment and sign and initial that everything was accounted for (since we were paying over $4000 for everything). We then got our locker assignments and got to go home. I spent the rest of that night taking everything apart, exploring all the different tools, and even testing out my lens set and making my "approximate" prescription of glasses with the trial glasses. I was proud that I could pretty much see out of them.

On Thursday we pretty much spent wrapping up everything and listening to more people talk. They fed us one last time (sadly) and then we got to talk to a lot of second years and third year optometry students and ask them a many amount of questions about what to expect. As well as calm us down about it not being as hard as they were making it sound.

That concluded official orientation and we were done. Friday afternoon was when we had to come back to the school and pick up our new laptops that we had to purchase through the school. Each of us got a brand new MacBook Pro and had to install some software while we were there and then got to take them home.

Now...this is the first time I've ever owned or really used a Mac. I've used some of my friends' Macs before, but that mainly consisted of me trying to use it and asking them a lot of questions. So I spent a lot of yesterday and today trying to figure it out. But, since I'm writing this as we speak on it right now, I think it's safe to say that I am slowly figuring it out. 

And here we are at Saturday! I am successfully relaxing and trying to enjoy my last weekend of freedom because let's be honest, the next 10 weekends or so will be spent with lots of studying since we have weekly tests on Tuesdays. 

Which brings me to my last point. Technically our schedule changes a little each week, but for the most part, this is generally our schedule for the fall quarter. 

And on Monday we start. Lots of us will be sporting our Galaxy Blue scrubs on the first day of class. Or we could wear business casual clothes. Such a hard decision, right? I'm okay with wearing what feels like pajamas to school. :)

Next week I'll put up a quick post about the first week of classes. Until then, everyone else enjoy their week!