Sic 'Em Bears

Orientation's are never fun...unless they're at Virginia Tech (Yeah OL 04!!)...but this one definitely needed some work. James and I woke up super early to meet the Political Science at 8:00 to walk over together, which is a little too early for me, especially in the summer time. I'm not much of a morning person to say the least. I expected to learn a little bit more about the university, maybe go on a tour or something, but there was none of that. We went to a session on being married in grad school, which was nice. It's very encouraging to see so many married grad students, because I thought we would be in the minority, but we are not! In fact, I'd say about half of the students in polisci are either married or engaged, and it may be an even larger number! It was also good to finally meet people, after hanging out with just each other for a month....it makes Waco seem less empty. They basically read us a bunch of statistics and rankings in the morning, and told us how good their programs were. Well....we know...that's why we're here! A lack of information for the most part was my major complaint, and bad coffee. However, it was good meeting people, and the afternoon session on being a TA and helping professors with research was really helpful!! It made me feel like I actually learned something, and the day wasn't a waste of time. I would have rather had an orientation just with the department, because that is really who we are going to be working with for the whole year, so I look forward to that orientation! So...there I go again, complaining about things not being run well enough. But, I really think I am going to write everything down and go to the graduate school about it, because there were a lot of things I wanted to know that I didn't learn from orientation, and a lot of things I could care less about that I did learn. And to top things off...grad students aren't eligible for free student football tickets!!!! Yeah...we don't pay AS much in student fees...only $738 a semester, so....we are eligible for everything but football tickets!!! So...we have the option of paying $110 to see a crappy football team play good teams. I miss Blacksburg sooooooo much! :'( Arg on Baylor for leaving grad students out...we didn't even learn the Sic 'Em Bears cheer...