How the hell? Christmas. Christmas Eve last year.

No? Nobody else likes to break out into songs from Rent. (Rent: kind of amazing Broadway rock musical from 1996 about Bohemians living in NYC). Alrighty then. Check it out later.

Clearly my friend (and fellow blogger!) KrystalV like sneezed on me or something because her blogger’s block caught a hold of me too recently. But there isn’t enough room here for apologies for why I haven’t written something in the past seven days. The truth is I’ve gone from super-uber-dee-duper-excited, to holy-crap-information-overload-it’s-nice-to-meet-you, to pchyeahh-I’m-a-university-student, to omg-omg-omg-what-am-I-doing-in-a-second-year-french-course, and finally to Wow-I’m-here.

The long awaited here.

So let me explain. It’s almost like the five stages of grieving. Just completely not the grieving part.

Stage One: Move In Adrenaline

Move in day was crazy and now that I think of it the most exciting 24 hours on campus. In one day I went from packing up my Uncle’s trunk with piles of stuff. And then 15 hours later I was making a team pyramid with 8 people in some random guy’s dorm room. What? I was pumped up like A-Rod on steroids.

That first day sure seemed to last forever.

Stage Two: Meeting people like you’ll die if don’t introduce yourself to somebody new in the next 40 seconds .
This lasts for the first 48 hours of move-in. I’ve been incredible lucky that just after the first day at Totem, I met two really cool people I’d even go as far as already calling my friends now. (Considering the fact that I’ve only really known them for a week). I just say that because it’s strange how you spend a week hanging out with people and you can feel like you’ve been BFF’s since gr. 2 and you start reminding them about stuff from their hometown.
But living on rez, there’s a thousand and one things designed for first years to get to know each other. Such as the ice cream House social. This promotes mix ‘n’ mingling by literally luring down students with the promise of free ice cream, then forcing them to talk to people because everyone can only fit in the room if they are standing 3 inches apart.

As if being in a room that you can hardly breathe in wasn’t enough, students can easily get over any self-esteem issues by going to the pool party at the UBC Aquatic Centre. It is hil-LARH-rious watching kids trying to race on banana boats (aka. Yellow Styrofoam canoes) in a pool. Okay, that was me and my new found friends and anyone else we could gather around.

Don’t get me wrong, I had a blast at these events worthy enough to make a rocketship jealous. But it was like an A.D. D. kids dream since it’s impossible to focus on one thing.

Stage Three: IMAGINE.

I’m not going to lie, my expectation for Imagine Day were quite high after hearing about it from friends. Can I say it exceeded them? Not really. Although, I really did enjoy it because it was a positive motivational day where you could meet people that you were actually going to see again. Once we arrived at the Pep Rally it really does hit you that you are here.The figurative student that the President keeps talking about is really you. You’ve been chosen to be here. You deserve to be here. And now you are here. I realize now that it was amazing being surrounded by my entire incoming class of 2010 and that that will probably never happen ever again. But for that moment, we were all here together.

Stage Four: The anxiety and nervousness of classes actually starting.

When you live at Totem you have to schedule in and extra thirty minutes of walking time if you want to get anywhere. Some people say less. But I’ve come to realize people’s sense of time is not universal. If you have a class on the third floor (or higher) – goodluck. The phrase I find running through my head is “Oh jeeze, uni is going to make me fit.”

Another sentence I find myself commonly thinking is “Dammit, I should’ve worn pants today.” When you wake up at 6:40 a.m. for your class at 8 o’clock, don’t be fooled by that little crack of light shining through your window, which you are keeping closed because you’re trying to be as quiet as possible and not wake your roommate. It lies. It will be overcast, cloudy and have a percentage of precipitation higher than 70 once you walk out the door. This is your warning and future reminder to myself because I know this will happen to me again… tomorrow.

Overall, I get the impression that people are nervous about classes. In general, my profs don’t seem that bad. None have a crazy foreign accent, à la exception de mon prof du français. My goal is just to breathe, hopefully participate and not get overwhelmed. Let’s be honest. Right before my first class, I was kind of freaking out, thinking to myself “What am I doing? I’m not ready for this!”. If this is happening to you, my advice is to sit down, take a deep breath. Everybody’s a little nervous and that’s a good thing.

Stage Five: Finally starting to catch on to the phrase “I am UBC.”

I really can’t believe it’s only been a week. Already I have stayed up ‘til 4:00 a.m. eating Dominoes, watching Star Wars and randomly meeting drunken fellows fiercely debating over the best movies they’ve seen, shouted the loudest I could on the echo rock and walked lingeringly through the Rose Garden.

I’m figuring out that the campus is just made up of Malls and my keen Girl Guide intuition really does come in handy, considering I find myself without a map many a time.

Moral of the story: we’re all here and we’re all going to survive.

Originally I wrote this last night and wanted to sign off with “I’m off to dinner and a movie.” But now I’m off to brunch. So cheers!