September 28, 2011
Do I look Italian? I only ask because on signing up for Italian today the woman made me swear three times that my parents were not Italian and that I didn’t already know how to speak it. “No, my parents are not Italian.” “No, my parents don’t speak Italian at home.” “No, I don’t know any Italian.” It was ridiculous how many times I had to answer that same question in different variations. I had never thought that I looked Italian… but apparently she thought so. Today I finally finished signing up for classes. It’s such a relief to finally be able to know what classes I’ll be taking this year. It was quite an adventure. Yesterday it all began when Sarah, Becca and I headed over to the History building to sign up for History courses. We waited patiently in the queue until it finally got to us. Becca walked up first told him she wanted to take ‘Roads to Modernity,’ a class we were both interested in taking. The professor looked up at her and said annoyingly “You cannot sign up for level 1 courses,” as if this was universally known by everyone. We panicked and jumped out of line to quickly figure out what to do. I ended up having to wait in the queue all over again and signed up for a module (class) titled “Blood and Treasure” which besides having a very catchy name is also about the Vikings. Needless to say I’m totally pumped. Following our history adventure we headed to the fresher’s fair where you learn about all of the cool societies and clubs that Nottingham Uni has to offer. We got free pizza, coupons and tons of fliers, but eventually had to call it a day with all of the commotion going on around us. Today, Kennedy and I headed to the bus stop at 8:30am… which was sort of dreadful. We ended up getting to campus by 9am, and were satisfied in thinking that we’d have plenty of time to figure out where to sign up for our Psychology modules… It proved to be a bit of a disaster. The sheet said to go to room A5 of the Biology building. On arrival we searched and searched but could not find A5… We finally asked to find out that A5 was a maintenance closet. Not exactly the place you would expect to sign up for classes at. The kind people at the front desk then hurried around their little cubbies frantically trying to figure out a number for the psychology offices. Lucky for us, the internet and call transferring services were both down. Eventually they found a number though and after a quick chat sent us on our way to the psychology offices. We arrived promptly at 9:25am. Uf da. Signing up for Psychology classes proved to be much easier than finding the location to do so. I got into both the Psychology of Addiction class (super excited!) and the Intro to Developmental Psychology class that I wanted! Next I headed over to the Trent building to attempt to sign up for Italian. I waited in a very long queue while chatting with other international students before finally voyaging further down the hallway. The queue I had been in the whole time was for the wrong languages! I finally found the queue that included Italian and chatted for a while with a guy from Boston interested in learning Japanese and a girl from Malaysia interested in Mandarin. When I finally arrived in the Italian line I talked for a long time with a girl from the UK, who was a psych major for me. At first I tried really hard to understand what she was talking about and was constantly asking questions, but eventually I just gave up, nodded and smiled. How can it be this difficult to understand someone speaking the same language????? I recognized all the words that came out of her mouth but everything seemed to mean something completely different than I’m used to. Ugh. After finally getting signed up for Italian I wandered back over to the fresher’s fair. This time I visited the Vegetarian group and the Psychology group and signed up for both! I’m very excited! The vegetarian group has events where they go out to eat as well as cooking classes! There’s a cake baking workshop coming up! Yummy! The Psychology club talked about a fair where we will be able to buy psychology books for cheaper as well as socials. There’s one coming up on a boat! How crazy! Then I hopped on a bus and headed back to the flat (home). After so much stress it is such a relief that I am finally signed up and ready for classes! I can finally calm down a little bit. Cheers ladies and gents!