Tuesday-Join With Us

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Tuesday, faculty day, and because I was being a first year that week it meant I was in social science. Woo! We all arrived at the football field in our blue t-shirts and had to register. Here we were given a coloured headband and told our team name. You would have thought these would have been fairly simple like Team A, Team 4, or even Team Light Green. It wasn’t. For some reason the organisers like to confuse things a lot so when my coloured head band was called I was welcomed to team “Alpha Sigma Beta”. My thoughts exactly!

We sat down in our respective groups and introduced ourselves. As usual this involved some fun introductory games and, as usual, there was a 5 minute pause when it got to me and I had to reply “yes I am from England” and then tell the entire story as to why I’m here. The question I don’t understand is when people ask me “Of all the places in Canada, why’d you choose Mac?” and then look at me as if I’m nuts. “Well why’d you choose Mac?” is my reply. Anyways back to Tuesday. Introductions and life-story telling over, we waited for the next instructions. “Using you’re name, come up with a group cheer and dance to perform to the other groups.” More cheering? Nooooooo!!! And how on earth were we meant to come up with cheer using Alpha Sigma Beta? Somehow, after a painstaking half an hour we came up with something and also managed to dress one of our group members in a Toga made of toilet paper. (We were supposed to, we didn’t just do it on a whim lol.) We performed it to the other groups, didn’t win, and continued with some more games. Before lunch these games included the likes of a primary-school-sports-day style relay race where we had to put on a toga and hat and do a little dance and so forth; and a charades-esque game where our entire group had to try and build whatever they called out (e.g. a fire engine), just using our bodies.

After Lunch, we played some more games this time involving some very cold (and very welcome) water. There were another couple of relay races, an adapted drinking game, and a rather impromptu but very funny mass water balloon fight. We then learnt the official SocSci cheers and dance routine which was a lot more professional and heck of a lot more difficult than the Bates one (it wasn’t as fun either but was equally as pointless). We then all left the field to go and be officially welcomed and accepted as McMaster students.

You’re One Of Us Now

One of the traditions of McMaster is that all new students must pass the Arch that connects the social and academic administration buildings. The “link” between the social and studious sides of Uni. So we all ran through this arch, touching the top as we passed, and on the other side were two lines of upper year students forming a tunnel and we had to run through this giving high fives to everyone as we passed. We shook hands with someone important (the Dean I presumed but I’m still not 100%!s(MISSING)ure) and then ran down the tunnel of faces which went on, and on, and on, and on. We ended up on the new football field and then all sat together in the stands. We heard speeches from some more important people and then each faculty stood one by one and repeated their oaths. These oaths were all funny and aimed at making fun of the other faculties, with ours including lines such as “We promise to provide psychological support for you when you’re business fails” aimed at Commerce/Business (Psych is in SocSci). We then got given free ice cream and headed off for dinner.

That night most the people in the university joined together for a free gig from Tokyo Police Club. They were really, really good and it was such an amazing night. At one point someone asked me what the last gig I’d gone to was. It actually took me a while to remember because it seemed such a long time ago. In fact England seemed like a long time ago. I felt like I’d known all the people around me forever and couldn’t believe it had only been 4 days. I definitely felt like a McMaster Student!

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