By now you should have received a decent number of emails encouraging you to attend Orientation Week or O-Week.

If you’re like me and decided to hit the delete button in lieu of going to the beach, the aftermath of your decision will probably result in the following antics. Here’s a week-by-week breakdown.

Week 1: You Will Get Lost

The scramble to get to class on time is real – especially when you have no idea where you’re going.

My first week on campus involved running around like a crazy person. Despite deciphering the weird timetable formula and punching in the correct coordinates in maps, my operation failed when my GPS went into meltdown. I circled my classroom five times in the span of ten minutes.

Week 2: You Finally Reset Your Expectations

Hurray, you survived week numero uno, and you even skimmed the subject outline on the train this morning – technically YOUR orientation week is up.

By the end of week two, I successfully determined two things: firstly, there was no consistent approach to roll taking (why does the attendance sheet always go missing?). Secondly, if I was running late I couldn’t confirm my attendance via smoke signals. There was also this thing called the “minimum attendance requirement”, which meant that I couldn’t do my degree by correspondence – what a shame.

Week 3: What’s With The Matching Jumpers?

No, it’s not a coincidence that everyone bought the same damn uni jumper – the entire faculty nabbed one for free (including your lecturer) at Orientation Week complete with ASOS discounts, coffee vouchers and other free shit you missed out on.

For me, this also happened to be the week my spirits were further dampened when I stumbled across my HECS debt invoice in my student emails. I calculated that a free jumper would have offset at least 0.000002% of the Student Services and Amenities Fee.

Week 4: Your Textbook Is Still In Transit

At this point in the semester, your self-inflicted lack of preparation resulted in the fourth week of completing nil readings. You want to try, but you can’t because your required text is still being dispatched from some remote warehouse halfway across Australia.

When my lecturer targeted me for class participation, it dawned on me that the class could be split into the ‘gunners’, i.e. savvier, more diligent students who snapped up the second-hand copies, closely followed by everyone else who flocked to clean out the overpriced newer versions. This week I continued my negotiations with the librarians to borrow the open reserve copy for more than 3 hours.

Week 5: You Figure Out What the Census Date Is

But only by chance when you overhear a classmate blab to another fellow peer how they are going to withdraw BEFORE the census date. After 5 minutes of intense googling, you put two and two together and realise this is more commonly known as the point of no return.

Week 5 for me was the deal breaker and although I can appreciate that universities finalise enrolment numbers before anyone does any real homework, it’s rather impractical to commit to a degree both financially and mentally when you haven’t even had the chance to locate decent coffee let alone your classroom.

You can simply avoid all this by just attending bloody O-week.

Jessica Marcellienus enjoys writing and feeding ducks at the park in her spare time. She also looks forward to completing a law degree while working full-time in the aviation sector. Check out more of her stories here.

(Lead image: The Good Place/NBC)