Dis-Orientation

You know how we all joke around and call school and work Orientations, "Dis-Orientation." And the truth is that most of the time we can't take in all of the details of the massive amounts of information thrown at us, but we at least retain a broad, general picture and a few choice tidbits to get us going.

Not the case today.

See, I'm totally disoriented after Part 1 of my Penn orientation. But not because of the massive amounts of information—in fact, that's precisely the problem. There was barely an iota of useful information contained anywhere in the two-hour session that I couldn't have gotten from a casual once-over of the Penn website.

Conversely, none of the things I need to know were even touched on. Let's start with registration. I cannot find a meaningful course schedule anywhere. Not even by asking one of my professors. I know, because I did. Not to say that she wasn't helpful, because she was extremely helpful as always. Just not so much that I actually have a clue.

So the rest of my evening will be spent perusing the Penn site for more information about what the hell I'm supposed to be doing tomorrow morning. What's weirdest for me in some sense is that Part 2 of the Dis-Orientation process (the departmental Orientation) doesn't happen until tomorrow afternoon—after classes have commenced. So I guess tomorrow we just kinda go and see what's happening at a few classes that look neat, then head over to Orientation with the vague hope that someone will have answers to all the questions we've accumulated in the first 36 traumatic hours of our PhD lives...