> Hello. I haven't posted in quite a long time, so I thought that now that I actually have something to write about, I should. This is most likely very boring (especially compared to unipeg's summer vacation... wow!) so read it your own risk.

Boring, no no no. Welcome back to the forum!

> Here I am at university. It's a really nice place. The meal hall is better than any other one I've been to. The library has books I didn't know existed, or at least never really expected to see myself ('The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature', 'Allgemeine Bücherkunde zur neueren deutschen Literaturgeschichte').

Oooo. 'Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature'... I just *have* to see that :-)

I live in the suburbs of a bigger city. The thing I miss most, while living out here, is access to the wonderfully rambling university library system in downtown Montreal. There were 23 separate libraries in the university I went to, and McGill's probably sprouted a few more since I graduated. I would get lost in them for hours. Actually, I finally clued in to the fact that I could get an Interlibrary loan card which did let me visit the five other universities on the island... Bookworm galore.

> It's also interesting to see and hear so many different kinds of people every day, to listen to the different accents (like Bostonian, Jamaican, Indian), hear different languages, or see someone wearing a turban. It's not as fun when you can't understand what one of your professors is saying, though.

Going to a college with an international reputation is quite a cultural eye-opener. Many of the people I know and grew up with are non-Canadian, but still, I had to go to university first to meet my first American...


> One of the neatest things here is that practically everyone gets the use of a new laptop included in their tuition. From almost any building on campus you can register courses, get an automatic booklist, and access many of a class' notes, or at least overviews of them, as PowerPoint presentations, so there's less to go through if you're sick and miss a class. It's quite convenient.

Cool, you must be at one of the few "fully-wired" campuses north of the border. I bet your dorm came Internet-ready too :-). I think Dave Parker mentioned something about having seen the joys of a fully-wired student residence, or some such.


> I went through frosh week,
> doing silly stuff. We rubbed petroleum jelly and toothpaste in our hair, kept "Socko" on our hand, got up at 3:00 AM to do aerobics and bake muffins for the frosh leaders, rolled in mud, etc. I've heard of worse. Anyway, it officially ended yesterday.

My sister just went through first-year "Orientation Week" at Université de Montréal, also. Got to do silly stuff like paint each other's shirts with thick red stripes for the French version of "Where's Waldo?", and cut star and animal shapes out of -- Kraft cheese slices? to stick on the wall! I've got to ask her how she really felt about being the only Ph.D. in her class doing all that... :-)


> Well, you can wake up now. That's pretty much it. I hope that wasn't too boring, but it was very exciting for me.
>
> Burger"Rambling, rambling, rambling"King

Hey do you have a "Partnerships to Advance Learning" type of mentorship program available on campus, where first-years can hook up with a senior student taking the same course concentration? That sometimes comes in mighty handy.

Wolf "Midnight Scrambler" spirit