Let's start with the first day.
22.5.2016
Well.... this isn't exactly the first day but never mind. I arrived at Utar around 8.45am and I totally did not expected a large crowd. It says in the orientation schedule that it starts at 9am. By the time I reached there, the entrance was already filled with people. Ah... the first time Malaysian being early eh? Haha,just joking. So, we were asked by the seniors to line up outside of the hall. In the hall, one of the seniors told us to line up according to the first letter of our first name. There are three sections.
Left : Newbies that have not pay their bills can be pay their bills here.
Middle : Several counters to collect your t-shirt and some documents. My body is petite and they gave me a S-size t-shirt. It looks like I'm wearing a guy's shirt. I'm perfectly okay with the bottom part of the shirt since I have some liking towards oversized shirt. I can even wear the shirt as a mini dress. You will be given these stuffs :
1. Orientation booklet with info such as the finalized orientation schedule, orientation bus schedule, student ID photo taking session,dress codes, etc..
2. Utar's shirt
3. Temporary pass
4. Utar's planner
5.Pen
6. File
Right : To submit the health report, declaration and fees refund policy. As I heard from the announcement, it is not compulsory to hand in on the very first day if you are in a hurry. You can hand it in within a week or so. And yeah, you do not need to bring your chest x-ray along since they didn't asked for mine. But if you are worry, do bring it.
There were a lot of new strangers, seniors and some secondary school friends that I saw. About 10 of them.
23.5.16
Today is the first day of orientation. When I arrived at the entrance of Block B, there were two banners ; Foundation & Degree. They told us to line up according to our respective courses and they gave us a picture with a cartoon logo on it. Mine was.... Beast Boy from Teen Titans and I was told to go up to the first floor and then enter the lecture hall that was on the right. My group is known as Beast Boy. As we sat down, the facilitators in each group asked us to fill in our names on the form that was given.
In the end, we went with Lou Shu Fen as our group name. I don't know who recommended it. But our name is the most interesting and funniest among all.
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| Lou Shu Fen |
We just have to write your name,IC, phone number and the time that we entered the hall. The MC ( I like her! She's very funny) introduce the facilitators to us. My group has 3. A girl and two boys. The ice breaking part is very fun! We have to move up and change seats every time an order is given and the last person to sit will get punishment. I felt very tense at first but this activity loosen me up.
Next, campus adjustment talk. It's nothing important. And because all those talks were conducted in the multi-purpose hall, we had a camera in the hall to show us and to let us hear the talks. And because our MC said that the talks aren't important at all, we just decided to hear the talk for 15 minutes. The balance time was used to play games. Yayy. The same thing goes for the department of student affairs briefing.
By then, it was already lunch time. Our group decided to eat at the chicken rice shop. The food.... wasn't tasty. The rice and soup was tasteless. And it costs RM 5.50. Wow. While waiting for the food to be served, you can see that a lot of them were already talking to each other. .
We went back to the lecture hall and we were told that it will end at 2 pm instead of 5.45 pm. It's because the peer mentoring programme is for those that had registered on Sunday.So the rest do not need to stay. The next talk is the soft skill briefing. The MC also said it is not important at all but I feel that it is. It's because that soft skills are needed when you work. They are skills that you obtained from years of training. It's priceless. So, what's the deal about all these soft skills briefing?
Well, let me tell you. When we graduate, we will receive a certificate from the uni,right? But if you sign up with the soft skills department aka the DSSC, you will receive one extra certificate. This certificate recognise the students' achievements and efforts to improve themselves. If you have this certificate, you may have a higher chance to secure a job due to the soft skills and you are less likely to be told by your company to go for soft skills workshop. You will need to collect 100 points from your Foundation year until to your final year. Every event that you participate in will earn you 10 points. Max 10 points. You can attend speeches...community service... and even orientation! The way I see it, it's easy to earn these points but you gotta have the time for it.
Well...that's all for the first day.
24.5.16
Second day. The talks for this day is pretty important too.WEAR YOUR UTAR SHIRT ON THIS DAY. First of all, we have the student billing and payment of fees briefing. We were told how to pay the bills, where to check, the procedures involved and what to do if this situation happens, etc. Because the facilitators told the MC that they don't have enough time to get to know us, the mentees, we did the real ice breaking among the members in every group. Name, where are we from, are we in foundation in arts or science, degree that will be taken and hobbies. When it was my turn and I finished, nobody clapped. What. It was like a delay of 3 seconds. The others were like.... when one member finishes, the others instantly clapped. I was wondering if I had left a bad impression on them. My whole face was tense.
Anyway. Let's move on to the third activity. Adventure Out. ..... Games... and dance performances by the dance club. That's pretty much all. I feel like I want to join the dance club after watching their performance. After the lunch break, we had some rehearsal for the mass call and meeting with the student council representative aka SRC. Damn. I saw two good looking guys. And because my group was in the lecture hall, so we don't have the need to go for the rehearsal since it's gonna be at the multi-purpose hall at G floor.
The final event is the mass call. Believe me or not, the president took an hour an a half for his speech. Thankfully, we were allowed to sleep and play with our phones since,well, we are in the lecture hall and the president ain't there.It's just normal speeches. Welcome to utar.... adjust your life... and! He said something that struck something within me.
" Keep all of your high school's certificate, keep them safe and treasure them. Because, the new life that you are leading now is very different from what you had. And to those students that scored well in their SPM, please do remember that having straight As' doesn't mean that you will do well in UTAR too. Like what the president of the SRC said, exams in Utar are hard to pass."
I do fully support the sentence that is in italic. Even I told myself this ; Remember, SPM was SPM. Don't keep your hopes too high even though you got straight As' for SPM. Things might and can change. You won't know. So just try your best.
25.5.16
THIRD DAYYYYY. Today is the day where we finally play a game for real. There are 3 talks today.In my opinion,the talks for today isn't anything important except for the faculty talk.From there, you will know the necessary information for Foundation course The first talk is the faculty talk. All of us foundation students were asked to enter the multi-purpose hall aka the mph for the talk. My gosh, it took quite a long time. And furthermore, the floor was hard af and it makes us feel so uncomfortable and feeling sore at the butt when we sat down.
Okay.So, let me try to remember what they said. They briefed us about the attendance, what to bring on the very first day of lecture, grading system, how to calculate your gpa and cgpa, how to use student portal,student mail,and the most important of all, the wble. Oh yeah, they introduce the CFS community board too.
Attendance : At least 80% attendance
What to bring on first day of lecture : Just bring stationary and note pad. The lecturer will tell you what reference to use.
Grading system : Ah... I'm not sure if I remember this well but the passing mark is 50%. That's a C. If you get lower than 50, you'll get a F. There's no D and E in uni ya. And surprisingly the mark for A- is 75-79.
Ah anyway, everything that they said can be found in Utar's website.
Click here to view Utar's CFS ( Centre of Foundation Studies) website!
Click here to view the grading system!
Click here to view how to calculate GPA and CGPA!
And like I said,the most important thing of all is WBLE. It's where your lecturers upload the lecture notes + tutorial papers. So do remember to check the student portal and wble frequently.
One thing that I would like to complain is that the wifi log in takes a very long time.
Ok, after all these faculty talks, we had our lunch break. The next talk was examination and financial aid briefing. And because the examination part was already explained by a lecturer during the faculty talk, we managed to save some time because all she did was to talk about the scholarships which you can just easily find the information online.Next, Utar's Explore the World Programme. I thought it was like some campus tour but heck,no it wasn't. It was about student exchange programme.
After all those talks, we finally played our game. It was something like this : Get your customers' order ( They are wearing green tag) . Buy the drugs aka coloured sugar from the ones wearing yellow tag. They are the dealers. And there will be police wearing black that will disrupt your 'operation'. But seriously, those policeman aren't doing anything at all. Then,you have to sell the 'drugs' that you bought to the customers. The thing is, we need to buy cheap and sell it off expensively. So..to buy cheap, some good negotiation skil is needed. But... it wasn't really fun at all. And I'm sorry if my explanation sounds crooked here and there. I was very tired and my mind was half-awake. But I hope you get the concept. Even though it is a game about drugs, the 'drugs' involved aren't really drugs. They are just coloured sugar.
I kinda screwed up two of my friends' experience in this game. I didn't know that there were many dealers and I thought that there were only a few. So, there was this dealer that ran out of 'drugs' so he went back to the mph to restock. And I blindly ran after him because I thought that the rest will tag along too. I even heard my facilitator saying "Follow him!". Luckily there were two girls tailing behind me. We ran back, the dealer was out of our sight and we returned back to KA block. THE REST OF THE MEMBERS WEREN'T THERE. Sooooo. The three of us took the elevator several times, searching for them at the KB block ( No, my screwing up part doesn't start when I blindly ran after him.) . And one of my friend called the facilitator and he told her that they were at the second floor.
When we reach the second floor, this is where my screwing up part starts. The girl that called the facilitator ran towards the right ( Let's call her Girl A ) while me and the other girl ( Girl B ) ran to the left. So you see, opposite direction. We two searched for them and Girl B called Girl A. The girl A came to us and found us. Yahooo. Now that we are found and we know where the rest of the members are, we are safeee. LOL. NO. When we returned, the members disappeared. Oh my god. So we searched for them starting from the basement to the third floor for 3 times. Girl A looked pissed off and Girl B told me not to wander around and just follow her. Because of them I felt so guilty. If I had ran in the right direction, none of these will happen. Well, luckily we found them,at last. I was really tense and did not spoke much nor participated much in the game. I was worry that I might be a hindrance to them like what I did to Girl A and B.
Gosh. I hope that they are okay with what happened to them.
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