<p>Anyone sign up for Preview/Orientation yet? It is fine if I sign up next weekend for it? I think I will be very busy this week...</p>
<p>i am waiting for a waiver.</p>
<p>lr2010, how did you get a waiver? I’m pretty sure I qualify as well, just can’t find the appropriate form.</p>
<p>the criteria for the waiver are:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>must have a FASFA (Free Application for Student Aid) on file for the academic year,</p></li>
<li><p>be Pell Grant eligible,</p></li>
<li><p>have an EFC of $0.00, and</p></li>
<li><p>you or anyone in your household have received benefits from a federal benefits programs.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Send your request to <a href=“mailto:pguest@dso.ufl.edu”>pguest@dso.ufl.edu</a></p>
<p>people, STAY AWAY FROM FORMS!!! just kidding! hehehehe</p>
<p>Ya I think you’ll be okay. After all, we have until May 1st to decide. If not I’ll just be SOL. Oh well. xD</p>
<p>thank you LR</p>
<p>I’m doing July 8 and 9 :)</p>
<p>My orientation date will be June 21-22</p>
<p>i’m doing july 8-9 too!</p>
<p>No problem! let’s see how much time it takes to obtain the waiver.</p>
<p>Since I’m heading to UF for summer/fall term, do I sign up for two preview sessions? might be silly question.</p>
<p>No, just one, for one of the sessions made for the term you were admitted.</p>
<p>Yup, just gotta do preview for the summer term, after that you’re just a old seasoned veteran. Believe me, if you’re a normal person, one will be more then enough. Of my 3 years at the university, Preview was my worst experience.</p>
<p>^ Why Zaersz? what happened?</p>
<p>I have a question about the HSAA orientation date. Does that orientation date apply only to those students who have completed their AA? I will have 57 credits from a dual enrollment program at a community college(not sure how many will be transferring over) and was wondering if I may be able to attend the HSAA orientation.</p>
<p>My daughter said preview was horrible, 2 long days (12-14 hours) and then spending night at Broward dorm. It was a lot of info in those two days, they help them with class schedules etc.</p>
<p>^ Who ever said that Orientation was suppose to be amicable? xD </p>
<p>Hopefully it isn’t that bad.</p>
<p>Yea, the days are long, most of the information they give you is pointless. Unless you’re incompetent as a human being, you know not to rape a girl, not to do heroin, not get get drunk and go to class… But you still get to sit through multi-hour presentations on these topics</p>
<p>You have to use the book curriculum guide to figure out what you are suppose to take, when the ISIS Degree Audit is 10X faster and 100X more up to date.</p>
<p>I still refer to that dorm as Broward Dungeon, I don’t know how anybody could live there for a year. </p>
<p>They assign you roommates based on the people who are next to you in line. I picked got with the most boring human beings in existence. One was actually just reading the curriculum guide… for enjoyment.</p>
<p>At night they literally lock you in Broward, with people posted at the door to keep you from escaping. There’s a little party in the basement, which again is about as lame as possible. When I did it 3 odd years ago they tried to make us do the soldja boy… yea.</p>
<p>The Preview Staffers are those like ultra-type A bubbly personalities looking to pad their resumes. They’re suppose to be super excited. One of the first things they tried to have us do was various Gator cheers. The gator chomp and the other cheers we do look badass with 90 thousand people in the Swamp, they look really stupid when you’re doing them without music in a auditorium.</p>
<p>Just a few of my memories from preview, maybe if you know nothing about college life, classes, gator culture, all that stuff you might learn something. If you are a lifelong gator who had many ties to the university before, it’s not really worth a damn, but you still have to do it.</p>
<p>^ ok, that was funny!</p>
<p>I found this when I tried to find more info about preview. This isn’t on the blog anymore, but google had it cached .</p>
<p><a href=“http://jackie1171.blogspot.com/2007/07/uf-preview-getting-there.html[/url]”>http://jackie1171.blogspot.com/2007/07/uf-preview-getting-there.html</a></p>
<p>Friday, July 6, 2007
UF Preview: Day One
The whole orientation was done by this schedule that split the students from their families, but some times together though. From 8AM to 9AM was check-in and continental breakfast. Breakfast sucked. My grandparents and mom pigged out as though they’d never seen food before, then claimed it was meager at best. That was the truth. There was fruit salad, chocolate-chip muffins (no other kinds of muffins at all), rolls, juice, coffee (regular and decaf), and tea. Some breakfast… . The muffin made me gag (so I threw it out after one bite), the fruit salad was basically just a lot of melon, and the coffee was sucky. I didn’t eat much else. Check-in was right after that. They gave me and my mom these canvas bags that had all this preview information in it, name tags, and a schedule. The name tags also had our meal tickets for lunch and dinner.</p>
<p>From 9AM to 9:25AM was the morning welcome. That’s was the absolute worst. The preview staff members started off by asking us where we’re all from. Most people said Florida, but there a few from the rest of the southwest and one from the north. They then had us get up and do the “gators”, which are hand gestures in the form of a gator chomping its jaws. There was baby gator (the thumb and forefingers moving in opposing directions), mommy gator (using two hands with bottom of hands held together and moving both hands in opposite directions), daddy gator (holding your arms out and clapping in a sideways motion), grandma gator (same as mommy gator, but with fingers curled in), and grandpa gator (folding one arm over the other and moving both arms in opposite directions). They really know how to creep a person out. I felt like a moron doing it. The only good thing that came out of this was that I spotted two of my friends from school: Lisa and Lindsey (no relation to each other).</p>
<p>Next came small group 1 session, from 9:30AM to 11AM. On each of our name tags was printed a letter which signified what group you would be part of. My letter was “F”, which I automatically dubbed as the failures. Lisa and Lindsey were both part of group “E”. Anyways, they took us to separate rooms by our Preview Staff leader (Carmen O.) where they talked to us about college majors and introduced us to Preview Advisor, a staff member that was going to help us apply for our classes. Our staff member was the head of the psychology department, which was pretty cool. He talked about a couple of things with us, had us fill in some stuff about our high school classes that we took and what we wanted to take.</p>
<p>At 11:05AM, we were released to go to a college session, which was basically a bunch of professors telling us about all the courses we can and should take in our desired major. Since I had pharmacy, I went there first. It was interesting, but I think I fell asleep at some point. At the second college session, which was at 11:55AM, I went to the pre-health session. That professor was amazing. He is in charge of the whole pre-health area of the school (well him and another guy), and that’s a lot of students (about 55% of the school). He told us all about the program and even threw in a little humor, talking about how really old he was (he was only about 40) and what his nasty roommates did during his college days. It was definitely…an experience. Props to him for making it out alive.</p>
<p>At 12:45PM, we went back to our small group sessions, where we were given lunch and then allowed to look through the classes that corresponded with our major and then narrowed down our choices. Carmen was there to assist us if we needed it.</p>
<p>We got a small break where we met up with our families at 2:25PM and from there, me, my grandparents, and my mom all went to the next to events: break-out sessions. These were sessions that introduced us to other aspects of the college life. We couldn’t agree on the first one and ended up going to one marked Career Resource Center, which basically talked about the relationship between careers and majors. The next session was Undergraduate Research Opportunities, which we did agree on. However, this session was so crowded, I ended up sitting on the floor. I also think I fell asleep. Give me a break, I was tired and the lecture was boring. Plus, I wasn’t the only person in that room who fell asleep.</p>
<p>Next came three different lectures, which were all held in the same place. The first lecture was from the vice president of student affairs. I don’t remember what that was about because I spent half of it thinking about getting the heck out of there and the other half sleeping. Next came a speech about alcohol and wellness, which I only half-listened to because it wasn’t anything new to me. And finally came a speech about safety. I listened to it for a while because I thought that it might be something new, but it wasn’t. So I tuned it out by fiddling with my phone. This whole thing lasted from 3:30PM to about 4:45PM. What a complete bore… .</p>
<p>Next came the walking. At 5:00PM, they told us to get our stuff and walk to Broward Hall. First, I had issue finding my family. They simply disappeared. I kept calling their phones, but getting no answer. I finally found them and examined their phones. My mom’s phone was set to “Off” and my grandma’s was set to “Vibrate” and neither of them knew that their phones were set to that. After wasting time looking for them, I finally was able to get my stuff. Just my luck: it starts to rain…hard. And I had accidentally left my umbrella at home. So I walked in the rain all the way to Broward Hall. My jacket was soaked.</p>
<p>At 5:30PM, they started doing things in rotation depending on the color of your dinner ticket that they had given to you. My dinner ticket was blue. This meant that between 5:30PM and 6:00PM, I would check into my room. My room was 213 and it was a triple. To boot, my two roomies for the night had already beat me to the room and had claimed beds. There was a bunk bed and a single bed and I got the top bunk of the bunk bed. I didn’t have an issue with it being the top bunk, but I did have an issue with the fact that the top bunk had no guard rail. I have habits of rolling around in my sleep and have occasionally fallen out of my bed because of it. So sleeping on the top bunk would have the possibility of be rolling off the bed in the middle of the night and giving myself either a broken arm, a concussion or both. I wanted to swap with the roomie that had the single bed, but she got a bit *****y about it, so I decided to wait for the other roomie, who I didn’t see yet. She didn’t come, so I had to go without asking her. I also got to see my friends’ Lindsey and Lisa’s rooms. Lindsey had gotten a double room just across from me and Lisa had gotten a triple, with the single bed to herself, at the end of the hall.</p>
<p>At 6:00PM, it was our turn for dinner. Dinner was being held at the Broward Fresh Food Company. We had to wait in this ginormous line in order to get in, but once we did, it was pretty much go around and take what you want. I think I sampled a little of everything, healthy and non. It was a bit bland for some reason, but at least there was variety. Since my mom didn’t want to pay for breakfast in the morning, she snuck out two oranges, three bananas, and a slice of pizza in her purse. I got a real good laugh out of that one.</p>
<p>At 6:30PM, we were herded out of the dining hall and into the basement of Broward Hall, where there was the resource fair. This was basically information about many of the more important groups of the school, such as student government and fraternities/sororities. I just yawned my way through it and left early.</p>
<p>7:15PM, they hurried us into this theatre,where they gave a bunch skits on real life issues that happen on campus. The program started out with the preview staff members singing a mixed version of the song from Grease about college life. Then there were all these skits about drinking, studying, sex, and other stuff like that. My definite fave was the one about body images. Three guys and three girls were talking about their looks. The guys were talking about how their clothes made them look fat (just like girls would do) and the girls were talking about how ripped they wanted to be (like guys normally would). The sex swap was hilarious. It turned out that if you go overboard trying to get a certain image, it probably wouldn’t help you much.</p>
<p>They next had our small group, F, meet, with group E joining us. We talked about the skits and just listened to the preview staff members. At some point during the meeting, Lindsey’s phone goes off and she has this ring tone, a song called “Buy you a drink”. My preview staff member starts dancing a little and Lindsey’s staff member gives her a look. Lindsey turns her phone off, but not before the entire room gets a good laugh.</p>
<p>At 9:15PM, they got us all back into Broward Hall to pick out our schedules. Our schedules then had to be approved by our preview staff member. My schedule got the a-OK automatically and I went to see if I could swap my bed with my roomie. Unfortunately I had no clue where to find her because they didn’t record any of her information except her name, and that would mean I would have to go to every preview staff member and ask if she was in that group. That would take way too much time. So I talked to my preview staff member and asked if she could do anything. During this time, my phone keeps ringing and ringing every time I try to talk. It was my mom, whom knew of the situation. I kept quieting the phone each time and she just kept calling, not getting the fact that the phone was being kept quiet for a reason.</p>
<p>Since nothing was gonna change, I went over to group E to see Lisa and Lindsey. Lisa was filling out her schedule and Lindsey was taking placement tests for chemistry and calculus. I had already taken those tests earlier and had passed hands down, but it took a lot of remembering. I haven’t taken a chemistry class since sophomore year and a calculus class since junior year. Lisa finished and we decided to wait for Lindsey. Lindsey came back really late and took even longer to fill out her schedule.</p>
<p>When she finally got done, we all went downstairs to the party that the preview staff members were throwing. It was dark and there were almost no lights anywhere. There was music playing and there were a few snacks here and there. Other than that it was dull. The creepiness started when the preview staff members started to dance around. They were weird. It looked really funny and they looked as though they had done it before. Scary much. I just kinda left at about 11PM.</p>
<p>I came back into the room and saw that my other roomie had finally showed up. I explained to her my situation and she agreed to switch with me. So after that was squared away, I went to take a shower. It was a bit funny bathing in this thing that had only a shower curtain between you and other people who can see you. It creeped me out a bit so I just kinda quick-showered and got dressed in my pajamas. I then brushed my teeth and went back to the room. My roomie was just getting ready to go take a shower as well. She left and I just kinda laid in my bed and tried to get my head organized. Between preview, work, and my mom, it was a miracle that I wasn’t suffering from a migraine. Soon, the other roomie came back. She didn’t seem as *****y as she was earlier, so I was nice, I guess. After that, I guess I just kinda turned toward the wall and fell asleep. And so Day one came to a close.</p>