New College of Florida

So sometime last week (last Monday to be "exact") I took the plunge and entered the collegiate world. Last Monday, August 21st, 2006, I moved to New College of Florida to attend University. However all of last week was given over to orientation. My room mate and I ended up clicking to the point of people asking us on the first day if we'd known each other prior to coming to New College. I also have two other adopted roomies, Jon and Jessica. Jon's a neighbor, and JEssica is in third court, but not like we can see her door from ours.
Things I noticed my first day at NCF:

• This is a hippy school.
• Orientation leaders ( a train of 15 of them, one was wearing a utility belt) have a tradition of streaking through the courts the first night to be oggled by the incoming freshmen and other misc. newbies.
• The food here sucks.
• This is a hippy school.

In general my orientation week was good. There was a pool party where activities included pile ups over a greased watermelon someone who will remain unnamed, threw into the pool, pyrotechniques displays, skinny dipping, and better music than had been played at the wall the night before. My orientation leader took our group to the beach, we played frisbee too, also there was a game the first day called the "Big Wind Blows" which if you ask, I could tell you about. This brings me to a key of New College Terms:

A Wall: "Dance" parties held every Friday and Saturday night, starting at midnight I believe. They are traditionally held in Palm Court, aka. The Center of the Universe. During orientation week they were held every night. The music was mostly bad. Competition to host walls are apparently very competative, sign-up for the honor taking place sometime soon I think. In this terrible picture you can see Palm Court during the day (it's just where the Palm Trees are).

Don't be an ass. Leave the glass: As our campus is a hippy one, people walk around everywhere barefoot. By everywhere, I mean evereywhere. One of the biggest danger to barefoot people is broken glass, which is why this phrase was coined. They really encourage you to leave glass bottles in your room and use cup. This is also pretty much the only rule on campus and it is a student one.

The Marriot: The cafeteria where we are served bad food. Everyone hates the food, and one returning student claims they loose weight when they come back to school. Needless to say this makes baking and cooking really popular. I actually have a microwave, toaster, and electric frying pan in my room because of this. Also the Marriot mostly has rediculous hours, meal times lasting two hours at a time. Eg. 12.00-14.00 lunch.

Freegan Table: The freegan table is a table at the back of the cafeteria where we can leave food we don't finish for other people. I like to sit at the freegan table, and today I left some gross curly fries there. I think it's supposed to have only vegan food (we have alot of vegans and vegetarians on campus), but am not sure.

Basic summary of New College is that it is an awesome school. I also noticed that it seems to be full of smart, geeky people who didn't study in High School. It's kind of wierd to notice you're surrounded by smart people. Needless to say even though we aren't graded here (all four years) it's an acedemically challenging institution, and it is possible to flunk out. They expect alot more from everyone cause they assume we're all smart. Here's to hippy times...