Welcome to UOW

It’s been a few weeks since I moved down to Wollongong for university. It has been a wonderful experience so far. I have made new friends, scoped out the cool places to eat, weird places to study and found out some of the important school stuff too.

I moved down a few weeks before the uni session started, this allowed me to get to know the place before jumping straight into study. The first week I stayed mostly in my room setting up everything and figuring out all of the items I left at home and still need to buy. I finally did end up leaving my room after the first week, and meeting 2 other Andrew’s and a few other people, including a nerd that didn’t get angry when I interrupted them reading.

As session started, I explored campus to find out where all my classes and lectures were so I didn’t get lost as much, especially since the building numbers at UOW makes no sense – like why is building 6 next to building 43? I am just glad that the room numbering system makes some sense. It wasn’t too hard to find out where the buildings are located, especially when I only need to remember 5 or so buildings, and if I need to find somewhere else I’ll just end up looking up the campus map.

Once session started it was quite awkward because I didn’t know anyone doing my degree. The good thing was everyone at uni is friendly and wants to make friends, and these are the friends that you make for life – well that’s what everyone keeps saying, hopefully that’s true. I have already met people doing mechatronic engineering and even a person doing the exact same degree.

The one thing that I found difficult was getting back into study. Even though I went straight from high school to university, there was still a few months between the two. It meant I fell into a bad sleeping pattern and that just relaxing as high school was finally over. I am starting to adjust back to the study and going to bed at a reasonable time, which is good.

Overall my start to university has been great! I’ve made friends across the entire university and different faculties, friends where I am living, and all over Wollongong. Even though I struggled getting back into studying, I am enjoying what I am learning – a massive change from the subjects you were forced to study back in high school.