The Orientation

It's entirely possible to summarize orientation (or at least, my feelings on it) in one word.
Useless!

Monday through wed. was all barn orientation. Thursday and Friday were 'free' days, but saturday and sunday were orientation for the school. All the other students moved in on friday night (fun times) and I was, for a point of hilarity, invited to a 'frat party'.
AKA, Barbeque.
But who would argue the point?

I didn't go.
Incidentally.

So saturday and sunday was school orientation junk. Blah. "useless" doesn't even begin to cover it, to be honest. We did a community service project (which was vaguely interesting). I chipped paint off a shed & repainted it. By merit of being 'tall', I got to chip stuff off from higher up.
One of the other girls in my 'group' (there were four guys - our group 'leader', who was a senior, and three other freshman guys; and three girls. Alissa - the girl who lives next door, Lauren and I.
It worked for me.

One of the guys (Blaine Patrick. Who names their child that?) was absolutely insanely annoying, though. Alissa has horses 'back home', Lauren knew nothing (they're both pharmacy majors). Blaine, however, thought that he knew everything there was to know about them.

I.E, before you 'race a horse, you want him dripping with sweat. Work all the 'frisk' out of them before!'

Uh. Right.
Color me, unimpressed?

Beyond the annoying chauvanistic "Hey, ladies," -in the smarmy tone of voice that just reeks of 'I can do it better than you'- "need some help over there?"

And then Lauren told him to bring the ladder over so we could get the roof angle. Unfortunately, he just came over and stood on the ladder, and talked. Right. Beyond him, though, the rest of my 'group' was interesting. It was really great to get to know Alissa more.
As a neighbor, knowing she's good with math = very good news.

When I'm taking calc, she'll be one of my no.1 people to know.

Ironically, Jared (Senior group leader) knows Courtney (My RA) so I've run into him...

well, more than I'd expect? He's really friendly. When my 'barn friends' (group consists of: Meg - whose horse gets along with Eagle, and she lived in Slovakia for four years, Caroline (Oklahoma, but she lived in Seattle), Jeri and Brynn (from Hawaii), Hailee) were going to dinner (it was really just Caroline and I) and the place was packed, there were no open tables.

Apparently Caroline had met him, too.
So we ate dinner with the strange senior group-leader people.
That was odd?

But hey. It was orientation weekend, it was, what it was. Bahumbug.

I was really surprised at how easily I met people. It was a good thing, being here a week earlier than the other students. The equine students all agreed, that first week, with orientation, we didn't 'feel' like freshman.
We already had our groups of friends, we knew our ways around campus and we knew how to get around it.

It was fun, really. Annoying, irritatingly structured and planned (the thirty minute powerpoint on Findlay as an institution - when it was built, it was the largest building west of.. well, something. See? It was so very important..) to death, but the people I met were interesting.

One of my 'funnies' would probably have to be friday night.
The 'barn friends' were at my room and we were playing on youtube, watching video clips of horses.
We found one of a race that was a mile and a half- but apparently, maitnence workers believed it to be a half mile. They were out on the track doing some upkeep or something when the horses rounded into the backstretch.
When the workers (three of them) saw the horses coming, they dove through the fence and left their buckets.
At the end, none of the buckets had been kicked or moved.

We thought that was pretty funny.
Kristen and I had been leaving the door open just so people could stop by and say hey.
Apparently, Alissa down the hall had been hearing us giggle and laugh for the past forty five minutes or so. However, she was too intimidated (Aww) to come say hi. Her boyfriend (Damian - a sophmore english major & education minor; transferred here) brought her over. Said it sounded like we were having a good time but she was too shy to stop by.

That was fun.

So.
Yeah.
That was orientation.
Blah. I still hate it when my days are planned out from eight, to five and there are 'optional' (but not really) things 'after dinner'. They say it nicely, but the fine print says "Be there Or Else".