27 February, 2009 in Engineering, University by Aonghas

Engineering Welcome

After our morning lecture with David (our last one, might I add) the engineering students walked across the road to the Fisher & Paykel Appliances Auditorium at the Owen G. Glenn building for the official Engineering welcome for first year students. It was supposed to start at 10am, but luckily we all made it in time. When we arrived at the auditorium, I was shocked to see how many first year engineering students there were! Seriously, there were hundreds packed into the enormous lecture theatre (around 620); it was hard to even spot an empty seat!

I was shocked at the large number of First Year Engineering students

The official welcome got underway as we sat through presentations given by various staff in the Engineering faculty, as well as some different clubs associated with engineering. One of the speakers talked about the dangers of crossing Symonds Street for nearly ten minutes, urging us to cross the road using the underpass. He even showed us maps of where the underpass was and everything. Although there were a few presentations that were quite informal, one of the messages that echoed in my ears for a while was the need for us to concentrate on our studies if we were to be successful in engineering. We were told that we were the top students in New Zealand, that Engineering is for the elite, and it made me wonder how I was going to cope with all the pressure I am likely to have this year.

After all the formal stuff was finished, we were taken across the road to the Engineering buildings to the ‘Circle’ (I think that’s what they call it), where they had a free BBQ lunch ready for us. As you can imagine, feeding over 600 people meant the queues went for ages and we ended up waiting in line for a good 20 minutes before being served a sausage and a vodka jelly shot drink thing. Since I don’t drink alcohol, I just gave my jelly vodka thing to Luke, as I’m sure he would consume it without any hesitation. Over our lunch break I met up with a few people I knew, including Mengyun and Menglu, Josh from the trip to America last year (from Westlake Boys), Julian Lees from Science Camp, Michelle Ye and Zac Preest.

An AUES advisor telling us about the activities for the afternoon

We were spilt into three groups for the afternoon activities after lunch. Luke and I joined the group that was heading over to the Recreation Centre across the road to play indoor soccer. When we arrived at the rec centre, we had to get into groups of around 10 for our indoor soccer games. Knowing barely anyone apart from Luke, Michelle and Zac, I didn’t know who to group up with – though I was trying to look out for any buff guys or sporty Asians who might be useful in an indoor soccer team. We managed to get a group of 10 in the end, fortunately including a couple of buff guys AND some sporty-looking Asians. Since they could only have two teams on the court/field at one time, the other teams went upstairs to play some ‘ice-breaker’ games. The game we played in our group was called “3-6-9″. The rules were quite simple: we stood in a circle and went around counting up from ‘one’. At every number that had any of the digits 3, 6 or 9 in it, the person had to clap. So it would start “one”, “two”, *clap*, “four”, “five”, *clap*, etc… it sounds easy I know, but believe me it gets confusing when the speed picks up and you have to think fast (for example, the number 33 would be a double clap).

My indoor soccer team

Our team was called down to the court to play soccer soon after, and our team was getting hyped (or at least I was anyway). However, when I saw our opposition, I felt a little uneasy. We were up against a whole team of huge Indian/African guys. They looked like they could squish us without even trying! Luke decided to be our goalie, but within the first 30 seconds of the game the big gigantor Indian/African surge powered through and scored. One goal down I thought, it’s still good it’s still good. A couple of minutes later, they scored again! Grr.. they were really asking for it after that second goal. That’s when the tables turned. Those Asian sporty-looking guys in our team unleashed their soccer skills and started creating gaps in the defence. It only took a big lob kick over the top and a couple of chasers to finish it before our team was on the scorebaord! It was like a comeback from the dead. Despite our efforts, the other team managed to score another goal and that was how the game ended. Final score 3-1. It was fun nevertheless though.

We then headed back across the road (using the underpass, tick!) to the engineering building where we had a quiz game led by some guys from Auckland University Engineering Society (AUES). There were multiple rounds of 5-question quizes, and each table had a team name. The table I was sitting at became team “Clueless”, purely because we didn’t know any of the answers for the first 3 questions. Luckily one of the rounds had questions about television shows, an area we were strong in! We didn’t win any prizes, but given a lot of the questions were about drinking and alcohol, I wasn’t expecting to know all the answers!

It was a fun day overall and very well organised. If my first year at Engineering is going to be anywhere as near as fun as today was, I’m sure I’m going to have a great time!