Yaaay, Imagine Day!

Imagine day was awesome.

Basically, there are a bunch of different events going on during the first week of school that are both faculty specific and not. Imagine Day was whole year event, in which you get assigned a group of 7-10 people who you’ll (supposedly) have at least one class with. It’s a day devoted to getting you oriented, helping you get involved and basically pumping you up for the school year and being at UBC. Here’s how it went down:

A few weeks before Imagine Day, we received emails telling us which MUG (MUG stands for ‘my undergraduate group’) group we were in, and who our MUG leader was. We were told where to meet, what time to meet, what to bring (your class schedule, a water bottle for free rootbeer floats (who doesn’t love a free rootbeer float?) and an umbrella in case it rains), and what to wear (a shirt in the colour of your faculty).

You note this down (or not), you spend time enjoying the last week or so of summer, you move into res, and then BOOM! You’re already 3 days into your UBC life and Imagine Day has arrived.

You meet with your MUG group and leader, introduce yourself and then get spoken to by the dean of your faculty. After that, you spend some time walking around campus, locating your buildings and, as in my group, finding out where the good spots to eat are >:-).

That takes you to about lunch time, and you get to enjoy a nice (free) Subway sandwich while sitting through a little workshop, in which you get to ask questions and voice any concerns you have, and get an idea as to how to behave at university and what is expected of you.

After the workshop, it’s time for…… *drum roll please* THE PEP RALLY! By far my favourite part of the day. 5 weeks later I’m still not over it…
Okay, I don’t know where I got this idea but for some reason I imagined the pep rally (after having read that it’s where the whole year is in a room and you get to cheer for your faculty) to be on a field, where you stand with your faculty and run at other faculties screaming stuff… I honestly don’t know where I got that from, but that’s definitely NOT what happened. Since you now know what I thought the pep rally was going to be like, you can imagine my confusion (and then later surprise) when we were lead into an indoor stadium. I was still confused after waiting inside the building but outside the doors to the stadium.. I was sort of like ‘why are we waiting here? Are we walking through this place to the field?’ to be honest, I wasn’t very excited about the pep rally, and that’s when the doors to the stadium opened and we were ushered in.

The first thing I noticed was the loud music blaring from the stadium. I was sort of in a daze because I was so surprised while walking in, but I remember thinking ‘what. the. hell.‘ .. Our group must have been one of the latest to enter because the stadium was full of about 7,000 students when we walked in, all standing with their faculties. The lights were dim and there was a random spotlight circling the stadium. I saw a sea of colors, created by people wearing shirts in their faculty’s color, all jumping and waving towels (again in their faculty’s color) and cheering for their faculty above the crazy loud party-ish music. I legitimately got butterflies… I also must have taken about 20 videos…
OKAY, SO after I came back to earth, I got super excited and cheered like mad for my faculty (ARTS, WOOOO!). There were a few rounds made in the stadium, where each faculty got to shout their cheers and basically everyone went crazy. There was also about 10 cheer-offs between faculties.
Then the MC came on and introduced all the deans and the president of UBC. Get this, they walked into the stadium to the Darth Vader theme from Star Wars. I want everyone to take a moment to appreciate what I just wrote. The deans and president of UBC marched in to the Darth Vader theme. From Star Wars. I almost cried. In case you were wondering, YES I am a Star Wars fan, but even if you’re not, you have to admit that was pretty awesome. After that, we sat through a bunch of speeches welcoming us and talking about what we were about to experience at university and Mark Donnelly from the Vancouver Canucks came and sang the Canadian anthem for us. I tried and failed very hard to sing along. 

At one point, all the faculties were shouting their cheers, and I don’t know how it happened but someone started cheering ‘UBC, UBC..‘ and everyone joined in. Instead of a bunch of different cheers being screamed, our whole year was united and there were 7,000 students cheering for our school. This is cheesy, but at that moment, I knew I made the right choice accepting UBC’s offer. I was ridiculously close to going to UVic but at the moment and ever since, there was no way I could imagine myself anywhere else. I fell in love with UBC and the immense amount of spirit shown by the people here. I fell in love with the fact that our pep rally was basically a massive rave and that Star Wars music played. I fell in love with everything UBC and all that I had experienced so far, and got ridiculously pumped for my time here. 

Basically, it was amazing.

After the pep rally was the ‘main event’ – basically a bunch of booths set up by different clubs where you go and find out which clubs you want to join and get involved with.

… and that was Imagine Day!
I had a great time. Anyone who didn’t go, you definitely missed out.

Until next time,

Tanya ♡