<p>Been talking with a few other students and Parents about Orientation. Always glad to hear any comments about the experience, class selection and the schedule process.</p>
<p>Did anyone who has gone actually get to see their room or a room in their dorm or community?</p>
<p>BTW, just to let folks know, my S learned at orientation if you're in the towers and want a dedicated parking space in the parking garage next to your dorm you must get it in person at the parking services office. You CANNOT order this decal on-line like you can most. I called parking services and this decal will be made available beginning 7/23. It's hugely pricey though at $450 for the year. However, you will have an assigned space next to your dorm.</p>
<p>zebes</p>
<p>Oh, and you can't see the towers during orientation because folks are still living there. They are 13 month contracts. At least that's the way it was on 6/5 when he was there.</p>
<p>We were at UCF during an orientation period and because of this, DD and I got to tag along on the orientation dorm tours. We could see any dorm that we wanted (the University dorm tour only showed us rooms in apollo, libra and hercules dorms). From 2:30 pm until 5 on the second day of orientation you just show up at whichever dorm you want to see and they take you in to see a room. We saw Lake Claire apartments and the Towers at Golden Knight Plaza. Lake Claire, while a lovely area and very close to the center of campus and classes, is older. Each student apartment there is a 4 bedroom/2 bath. The bedrooms have painted cinderblock walls and were very, very small but...private and had their own locks. The Towers at Golden Knight plaza were gorgeous, luxurious and mega expensive. They are on 12 month leases (not semester) only. They are new, with nice sized single bedrooms and full size beds (as opposed to the twin XL everywhere else on campus). Each floor has its own laundry room (Lake Claire has a common area laundry facility). My DD kept mouthing "I want to live HERE!" during our tour of The Towers! We got our tour of Tower one on June 13th....they just took us to a room on the 7th floor that was not currently in use.</p>
<p>Seiclan, that's great! I wish that had been the case when my S was there the week before. They wouldn't let him see the towers, and I'm trying to envision the room ... he'll be in tower 3. I checked on-line, but it's hard to imagine how it is ... like is the desk attached to the wall or can you move it around. <g> My S's is a big guy and one of the things he loved was that he'd have a full bed. Since he decided to stay in state and use his bright futures and merit we told him he could pick the towers if he wanted. And, it's great to hear about the proximity of the laundry; although, we live local so he can always use our machine ... just not mom. ;)</g></p>
<p>Zebes</p>
<p>The furniture is movable but, there is no place to move it. the bed simply does not fit anyplace else in the room so it is what it is.
Wow, tower 3? He is in the brand spankin new one...Honors students and athletes only. My neighbor's son is in Tower 2 and has the same room for both summer and fall (so he is lucky, he can keep his stuff there during the gap). The mattress on the full bed was a plain 8 inch thick plastic coated dorm mattress....so I would buy him a good pillowtop mattress topper. Also, there was no microwave in the apt so you may want to get him one.</p>
<p>Seclan, thank you so much!! These are those all important questions i wanted to know, LOL ... but dingleheaded S is so laid back about everything it's ridiculous. I figured the bed wouldn't be Serta, LOL ... maybe we can cart his mattress over. <g> He's in the honors program, so he did apply for the honors housing. We'll see how it goes. Most of his friends are staying home this first year, but I think they want to get an apartment together next year. We have a family situation at home -- my mom, who's stage 6 alzheimer's lives with us (and she's the 4th parent to do so). DS has been such a tremendous help these past few years; I'd like him to get away from it a bit and feel as though he's going to college and not just staying at home and switching high schools. But I must admit ... I don't mind he's staying so close. :)</g></p>
<p>Zebes, who saw a great microwave price for 1000 watts, but I figure we'll wait til he moves in. He's not into contacting dorm mates early, and I can just see 4 microwaves showing up.</p>
<p>From what we can see the rooms at Libra look pretty nice, wondered if anyone had seen them and would care to comment?</p>
<p>L's roomate and L's have conversed, they found each other on facebook and have been mailing a bit back and forth. She is just back from Orientation and said she had a good time.</p>
<p>I've been wondering about TV and the microwave, we will see what they cook-up amongst themselves so we don't endup with double anything.</p>
<p>CoasterPhil mailed me to say that classes go in the day of scheduling so the blocks of closed sections for each course are left from previous Orientation sessions and the new ones aren't yet seen on the site.</p>
<p>We did go in and see the rooms in Libra during the housing tour (I think it is daily at 12:30 from the housing office).
The models look a lot like the photos on the website. I did notice that the beds do have those notches in the head and foot boards that allow you to raise and lower them (to accomodate underbed storage). We were taken into two dorms so that we could see both styles of rooms (the L shaped one and the standard). I really liked that the rooms (in the halls that had the rectangular rooms - Citrus, Flagler and Sumter) all opened to a common area with furniture (chairs/tables). This makes it easy to meet the other people on your floor.The hall that had the L-shaped rooms (orange, brevard and seminole) opened up to standard long hallways. The model had a shower rod (tension type) and curtain over the toilet area giving it some privacy (otherwise it is in the same central hallway between the two double rooms as the shower). The laundry room was on the first floor, in the middle of the complex and there were soda and snack machines nearby. Libra, though not as old as Apollo, seemed a bit more worn but definitely liveable and very social (great for freshman to meet people). It also is very close to the dining hall.</p>
<p>Thanks for the review on the rooms, did you notice or would say that there is a good amount of closet space? Also the sink area? with two girls sharing it and all that they have to have is there enough drawers, plugs ect.</p>
<p>Also I gave orientation a call, classes/sessions for any orientation block will appear the second day of any orientation session. We have spent some time to access Prof ratings and come up with a list of prefered ones for a couple of classes. Goal is to try to get the best Prof possible. Perhaps there maybe some additional time on that morning they do scheduling to do some additional online review and see who is teaching.</p>
<p>my son's at UCF for summer session as a freshman - living in Libra (which is all freshmen now).<br>
Any questions, feel free to ask (we may have figured out the the answer...)</p>
<p>Mishdoob1,</p>
<p>Have you figured out the whole "purse" thing on the student I.D.'s? I know I'm just showing my age, but I guess it's taking me longer to comprehend. LOL</p>
<p>Thanks,
zebes</p>
<p>My wife and D are at Orientation right now. 98 yesterday, but it was the day before todays start. They did Hard Rock at Universal, checked out the Knights corner bookstore, did some shopping and spent a fair amount of time driving and stopping around campus.</p>
<p>I just got a call from my wife, she is finding the seminars very interesting and liked the dining facility at the Marketplace when they went over for lunch. She went to the Arts and Humanities talk this morning. As for D she is on her own path, there was a eye roll I guess from a bunch of kids this morning when they found out it goes till 8PM and attendance will be taken. They meet up again at 5:00. We were told that you could not get a E mail account until just before classes, apparently this is incorrect from what they told my wife, how do you get it anyone? I guess all further correspondence will be via E mail from now on no more hard copy.</p>
<p>D is assigned to Libra, what do you like what don't you like?</p>
<p>Ray, </p>
<p>During S's orientation, several of the UCF people told him to set up an email account like gmail. They suggested you make it a serious account -- none of this luvsyababy@ ... kind of stuff, but a reasonable named account. He was told it would be more consistant than a UCF account and not to bother setting one of those up. You'll have to let us know what your d's folks tell her. </p>
<p>Zebes</p>
<p>Tell your wife, if she wants to eat in a little town diner and see our chickens, drive north on 434 into downtown Oviedo. The Townhouse Diner's on the right, next to the Popeye's where the chickens sit on the Popeye's sign. Stupid chickens!</p>
<p>we weren't sure about the purses either, so we opened a Suntrust account to tie in with the UCF card. We went with the lowest meal plan (10), which gave more flex bucks, and my son said even 10 meals in the dining hall is too much. It's not convenient to get to dining from Lake Claire, and it apparenlty rains alot in the summer, so getting to the dining hall for the 10 meals seem like a chore for my son and his friends....(there should be another one built closer to Lake Claire some time in the fall.
For the fall, we're going with no meals, just flex bucks. He said he doesn't need money on a "purse" yet, but we'll put it on purse 3 when the time comes.
My son said Lake Claire is in a perfect location.</p>
<p>Thanks for the offer for the road trip, we will have to arrainge to meet sometime. And thanks for the lead on the E Mail, I'll quiz my wife again as to what they say.</p>
<p>We are also going to open I think a Suntrust account as we can then go to the local branch and do any money things we need to.</p>
<p>I just checked the online catalog for courses as registration is today at 1:30. Can't understand what is going on, it looks a bit different than it did, but if anything it's worst.</p>
<p>There are no individual face to face math lectures aval now (small groups) for math, The only thing that is open is the large 400 seat math lecture and then the lab groups with the TA's.</p>
<p>No new seats opened up in the Cinema Survey courses, the only seats open is at a 3 hour class at the Rosen School on Thursday Night.</p>
<p>These are just a couple of examples. Anybody have any insights? Is this what is going to be aval when they register, it's not very much and the times are not great. Is there a chance that what can be seen right now isn't what will be avaliable when they register?</p>
<p>You can't see it yet. They don't update it until an hour or so before the registration starts. In my group people were trying to look things up around 10 and the advisors told them not to waste their time because the new classes weren't in the system and everything would change closer to the actual registration.</p>
<p>The comment on the E Mail again this morning was that a link would be sent from the advisor via E Mail with instructions as to how to set it up, so we will see what happens.</p>
<p>No Football ticket people there yet so nothing new to report on there.</p>
<p>CoasterPhil, thanks for the info. D spent a fair amount of time looking at Prof's and class options. Looks like we will see what happens when it finally opens up.</p>
<p>We may have to switch over to Suntrust, if that makes it easier. We'll see .. he already had an account open at another bank. Yeah, as far as the meal plans, we're going to go with a very minimal one, if one at all. Since S will have a kitchen in the Towers, and he's a scrambled egg/omelette and microwave-R-us kind of guy, not sure it'd pay to do too much with the meal plan. At least that new cafteria's supposed to open up in the new convocation center, which is much more reasonable for him than the other one. We're still debating that whole thing ... </p>
<p>Ray, hope your d gets what she wants and needs without too much hassle. I saw a thing on the local news this morning, related to Hitt's capping enrollment next year and putting on a faculty/staff hiring freeze, and some of the UCF kids they were interviewing were talking about how it was already so difficult getting the classes they wanted or needed. </p>
<p>Zebes</p>