Since my last update I've moved into my new room, met lots of new people and survived the first day of my course!
I arrived in Derby on Saturday, and with the help of my lovely mother, got my room all set up. I really like my new room and it feels homey already. I'm a big fan of nick-nacks (not quite sure how that's spelt) so my room is already full of little bits!
Saturday night I met up with people from my course, there were six of us, and we went for a few drinks to get to know to each other. We went to some really nice bars with lovely outdoor areas. My favourite was called The Greyhound and they had this guy singing on an acoustic guitar. I'm a sucker for live music!
On Sunday my flatmate and I went to ASDA in the morning, got lost on the way and ended up on this dirt track in the middle of nowhere, it could have been worse, my GPS wanted to send us down a cycle path. It all added to the excitement and we got there eventually so it wasn't too bad.
In the afternoon we went into the city centre to have a look around and luckily stumbled upon the Pedal for Power party in the market square. It was a really nice introduction to Derby with live music, spoken word art and theatre companies. There was even Derby's smallest venue, aptly named 'The Shed'.
I woke up this morning full of nerves, anticipation and excitement! We left the house at 8.15 to give us plenty of time to get to campus. When we arrived we were shepherded to the lecture room. The first lecture was pretty lengthy. We were in there from about 9.15 to 11.45, with only a ten minute break in between. We got plenty of information about the structure of the course, assignment due dates and the plan for the next two weeks. We also had lots of people come and speak to us. A representative from each of the three teaching unions came to speak and we got free diaries, wall planners, markers and pens! The student wellbeing centre came to talk as well as the health service and someone to tell us more about our trip to Carsington Water on Friday, it actually sounds like it's going to be fun!
Afterwards we had to go t o the library to complete enrollment. Luckily we were there pretty early so we didn't have to queue for long, some people were queuing for over an hour! After enrollement we got our student cards (yay student discount!) and had time for some lunch.
At 2pm we had meetings with our groups. There's about 20 people in my group and we'll be spending lots of time together over the next 9 months! We did some ice breaking activites - a short interview activity where we had to tell the group about our partner, a seat changing activity where we had to change seats if a statement was true for us 'e.g. I've studied at Derby university before'. We also did an activity where our partner told us about their worries and we had to draw a picture depicting them. We then had to walk around the room with our picture visible, in silence, and find people who we thought had similar worries to ourselves. When we found people we had the oppurtunity to discuss our worries and get advice from the group. Overall it was fun, and great to get to know people a little better.
I was really exhausted by the end of the day though, and haven't done much since I got home. I have however read and highlighted the Ofsted report on Safeguarding we had to read for next Monday. I think this is the first time I've ever done work before the day before it's due! Hopefully I can keep this up!
I'm off to get some much needed sleep now, I don't think I quite appreciate yet how precious sleep will become over this next 9 months!
xxx
No comments:
Post a Comment