Do they have an art department at your uni?
Nope, it's the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. No art.
Today was exhausting. At first there was a big introduction event, where a Professor explained to us how elite, how rich, how good and how well known the university is. This was like one and a half hours long. He seemed very arrogant, and scared everybody with how much you need to work. He asked who had 15 points in mathematics in the Abitur (15 points is maximum. IIRC I had only 9). Half the people raised their hands. I got slightly worried. He stated ”Hmm, there were more last year.” He asked who had a 1.2 or better in the Abitur (1.0 is the best, and if you get a worse grade than 4.0 (normally here in Germany you have grades from 6 to 1, where 1 is the best) you'll fail). At least a fifth of the people raised their hands. Then he explained that there would be a change in the literature list, and we'd have to read the first chapter of a different book as a prerequisite for one course, as we'd get a different professor. I didn't receive a literature list and now really got scared. Somebody else stood up and asked, because he didn't receive a literature list either. The professor said something along the terms of ”It's your own fault if you fail to configure your student mail account”, which made me slightly angry, because I had just received the letter with my login data, and assumed the list would have been sent before the account was created. Anyway, he asked for somebody's copy, got one, and then listed about 5 books of which we'd have to read the first or the first two chapters until two weeks. He explained that when so many people didn't receive the list, then many wouldn't have received the invitation to take a self evaluation test. He had explained that in cooperation with another educational institute they'd now have a system where you can ”study in your own speed”, which would always lead to at least two additional semesters, and because so many people didn't take the voluntary self evaluation they'd now make a short mandatory test right after this introduction, and another after four weeks. The questions were really difficult, and I got really scared because not too few people around me seemed to be able to deal with them, at least to an extent, while I couldn't answer a single one. It started off with a bit of calculus, went on with matrices and another question which I couldn't even decide what topic it was, and ended with three on statistics. The first two were similar (about correlations between properties of new students) and the last one was ”This set of new students, how gullible are they?”.
Immediately people stormed to the front, and told us that the whole thing was almost completely bullshit. The ”professor” is not actually a professor, and then he asked all the second and third semester students to leave now. Almost everyone who was good at the questions or raised the hand on the questions for good Abiturs left. They had all been acting.
Some groups presented themselves, and we could decide which group to join. I decided for maybe the nerdiest of them, but it was a tough decision. I almost went for the group ”Arrrrrr!”, who presented themselves to Monkey Island's Scumm Bar theme, by reenacting a scene from Monkey Island. Basically ”My name is Guybrush Threepwood. I want to become a mighty student!”. Most other groups (a second being pirate themed, presenting themselves to the ”You are a pirate” song from Lazy Town, more commonly known as ”Limewire Song” or ”Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free”) were mostly about drinking and showing us the clubs in the city, which is not really my intention during introduction week at university.
So they showed us around on campus, and I slowly regretted choosing this group, because everybody was at least as shut in as I was, so even when I managed to talk to somebody, we only exchanged a few sentences and then went silent again. I don't think I've ever seen a group of thirty people be so quiet.
At the evening, after running around on campus for the whole day we had a small barbecue, and stood around. In the end I left at 10pm, as my legs fucking hurt, and some others were leaving as well. But as we were standing outside we finally talked a bit more, and it felt a lot better. But in this group I seemed to be the only guy who could talk to the only girl in the group without seeming in any way too much affected by her gender. She was either ignored when technical topics were discussed, or somebody made slightly sexist statements, most of them in the way of overly approving of her. I just talked to her just the same as to the others, and it was fine.
Now: tired.
