My Orientation Experience - University of South Florida

It started August, Monday 19th at 6:30 AM. I was really tired because I slept only about 4 hours the night before. I arrived and went on line. Got assigned to the green wrist color band in a group called "Bull Runner" and my OTL (Orientation Team Leader) was Juan Zapata (a Croatian in disguise - inside joke -). We gathered in the Castor Lawn and met the other members of our team. In my team there was Paige and Gabe from Pennsylvania, Shaine from Trinidad and Tobago, Margaret from Uganda, Brandon from Tampa, Rebecca from Orlando, Ryan from Canada, George from Kenya, Shady (I'm not sure how to spell it) from Egypt, Sherya from India, and Nicole from Mexico. I got to meet all of them and also discovered that Shady is also going to major in Mechanical Engineering. After meeting each other we learned the school's chants used for football games and stuff. GREEN GREEN GREEN, GOLD GOLD GOLD, GREEN GREEN GREEN, GOLD GOLD GOLD, USF. or also S O U T H F L O R I D A, SOUTH FLORIDA SOUTH FLORIDA GOOOOO BULLS! After that we went to the Marshall Student Center (MSC) for some lectures about college, we stayed there the whole morning. Then we had our first from many Bull Breakouts. We went to a special room just for the Bull Runners and got to meet each other even more, we also played games and it was really fun. Our OTL, Juan, was so funny and fun to be with. And then we finally had lunch, I had been starving because I barely touched my breakfast. We went to the Fresh Food Company (FFC) and I had some fries and turkey, next time I promise I'll have a salad. We all talked about different topics, such as sports and food. We continued with the lectures, this time about housing and stuff about drugs, alcohol and sex... So boring! Well after a long day of lectures and games we had a carnival at the MSC! I hung out with Margaret and we went to a couple of games and earned some money (to exchange for a prize later), I had a snow cone and she some cotton candy, we also made our own leather bracelet; mine says "*peace sign* SK *bull*". At first I was really apprehensive and didn't want to go to the carnival because of the tireless. But at the end I decided to stay and it resulted to be an awesome night! Suddenly all of my drained energy came back and I had a lot of fun with Margaret. At 11 PM I walked back to my dorm and unpacked my stuff. I unpacked everything I had and after that I fell asleep (of course after I skyped with Rod and finished the book I was reading).

The second day I set my alarm at 6:30 AM and overslept. I woke up at 7:30, I had 30 minutes to get ready, and I did. However, I missed out on breakfast. Each orientation team met at the Castor Lawn and we went ahead to the MSC to do a UCLA survey about college (CIRP) and then we had a couple more lectures. Finally after the lectures and lunch we went ahead to register for class! Engineers had to go to the Engineering II building and gosh, it was a long walk. They told us for the third time how to register for classes, after that we had our individual advisors. I told mine about the transcripts I already had from FSU and she said it was okay to transfer them. Originally they put me in Precalculus because of my SAT score (620, 30 points more and I'd have been placed in Calculus). But thanks to FSU I registered for Calculus. And after registering for classes we were officially released!

I had a lot of fun in orientation, but it was very tiring. Mom told be about other parents' comments about this university:

• They like this university more than their other kid's universities
• This university really treats their students with excellence because they even offer orientation for parents
• This university preoccupies about the student's future compared to others. They offer them a lot of Undergraduate Research, internships, co ops, and what not.

The point is that the comments were really positive and they made me feel great about choosing USF over UF, UCF and PSU. (About PSU, I had a teammate in my orientation group from Pennsylvania and she told me that USF definitely exceeds PSU academically, thumbs up for USF!)

These are my classes, I still need the Chemistry Lab but they were all closed!
I really like my schedule, because there are no classes starting before 10 AM!