Geo Studies 2012 - Student Post: Day One

Today was a mess, but in an incredibly good way. It was like any other first day of any semester, full of paper work and 'what to expects'; except this time it was different. This time it was the first day of Geo Studies (something that I'm sure everyone in the class will agree on) the class you anticipate for months at a time, sometimes even years. For weeks now I've had a countdown on my phone, I've shared excited remarks with fellow students who I knew I'd be seeing everyday come second semester, and in all honesty last night I couldn't fall asleep because I was so excited and I know Cailean couldn't either because we were talking about it at about midnight last night. The first day truly lived up to my expectations of the course. Yes, I was expecting paperwork (perhaps not the overwhelming amount we got, it was rather suffocating actually what with a manual, permission forms and Costa Rica forms)and yes I was expecting the 'this is what we're going to do this semester and this is how everything is being broken down and marked', but what I was not expecting was how incredibly jammed packed the semester is with awesomeness (if that's even a word). We have roughly 2 trips each week, or at least 1, 2 work placements, a 9 day trip to Costa Rica, and a canoe or hiking trip at the end of the semester, PLUS we have assignments and everything packed on top of that (but the assignments actually look like they're going to be a ton of FUN). We did an icebreaker to start of the day answering 6 questions:



1.) what's our name or what we want others to call us
2.) if we were given a free plane ticket to go anywhere, where would we go?
3.) why did we choose to go to the above place?
4.) what have we heard about GEO thus far?
5.) what is one thing everyone should know about us?
6.) finally, do we have any questions directed strictly towards Simms about anything.






I volunteered to go first after Simms and of course tripped on the way up, ultimately making it okay for anyone else to mess up while doing theirs. We also did a 'first impressions' ice breaker activity with just Simms, no one knew until after that he video taped the whole thing, I got most of them though and I'll put that in later. We took a group picture, and like I said in my journal entry that's posted in the earlier post, the class is already starting to feel like a family. It's a very suttle feeling so far but it's defiantly there.

The day was full of lots of laughs, some embarassing moments, cinnamon rolls from Ms. Andrychuk, ice breakers, paper work, and just getting accustomed to the format of such a course. To end the day Andrychuk had us do a 'True Colours' activity. Each person individually answered questions as to what they thought their personality was most like, rating each row of 4 possibilities with a 1,2,3 or 4. At the end you totaled up your score and found out which colour best represented your personality. the colours where:

Blue: compassionate and caring, more of the 'loving' type
Orange: spontaneous, outrageous, and active type
Green: quizzical people who like to think of multiple ways of doing things
Gold: very orderly, procedural people who usually assist others

Our class had 6 True Blues, 1 True Golds, 1 or 2 True Greens and 12-13 true Oranges. Needless to say the Orange personality dominates our class.

Today was made up of being nervous and excited, to walking through that portable door and taking our first step into committing to the close knit family we will soon become, to first impressions and ice breakers, to personality activities, to laughs and embarrassing moments, to a burning desire for the adventure and promises that await us in the future we have as a class and family. I honestly could not have asked for a better first start to such an amazing part of my life and hopefully it will be something that changes me for forever.

- Ann-Marie Traynor. (: