On Feeling Way In Over My Head

With Fresher's Week at University nearly over, I must say the past seven days have been nothing short of crazy!

In Halls, I've made loads of great friends on my corridor -

Becky: 'I wouldn't mess with her, she's a Jordy, she'll nut yer!' - not really, she's lovely and probably the girl I get on best with - great to go out partying with but not full of herself.

Nicola: Nicola's great - she's like our Mum, telling us off for nicking chalk! She's also great at getting things done, like her passion for recycling and getting a toaster for our miniscule pantry!

Clare: Clare's our guide to Shef, living only 30 mins away, she's lovely and she's our rock queen, with piercings in places I didn't know you could get pierced!

Briony: I thought Briony was really quiet at first, but once she came out of her shell she's really funny, especially with her ditsy moments - do coffee and electricity mix?

Jennie: Jennie is so cute and posh! She's from Cambridge you know...

Vicky: She's my OAP pal, both of us having taken a gap year, we're the older and wiser ones of the bunch, or so it would seem! She also shares my passion for 'taking-the-piss' dancing!

The other girls on the corridor are great too, but there's a silly door in the middle which really segregates us, and although they're fun to chat to, this sadly doesn't happen very often.
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Fresher's Week events have been so much fun, we had Pop Tarts at the union on Saturday night, competitions in the halls on Sunday, Kingdom Nightclub on Tuesday (though Kelly Llorenna was terrible!), Gatecrasher on Wednesday (me and Becky getting trashed on £1.50 doubles!), Bar One on Friday (then planning to come back via the Bottleo and have a party at home but them being all closed :( ), and Fever in the bar last night. It's been great, and I've not been to bed earlier than 2am all week, and my friend in Leeds, CB, assures me it probably won't get any quieter!
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My only worries are my course (which is hardly suprising), but I just feel like I'm in way over my head, and it's not even started yet! Firstly, my department has decided to put ALL of my course materials on the intranet (which led to a mad rush to get my PC online), and can I just take this opportunity to express my complete dislike for web-based learning? Surely it would be so much easier to produce handouts! This way I'm paying every time I need to print off a handout and it's incredibly irritating!

It also means I have to keep a constant eye on the intranet and make sure there's no new messages or announcements, or I'll miss something really important. The thing is, everyone is missing really important things, such as a change of time to our introductory lecture last week. LOADS of people turned up at the same time as me, which turned out to be the wrong time! So, really, it seems like a VERY inefficient way of running a department to me. Especially when we're encouraged to broadcast our problems and queries via the message boards, as opposed to actually consulting a member of staff. What if we need an immediate answer?

In addition to all this apparent reluctance to keep up with modern technology on my part, I also feel like I really don't know what's expected of me, with regards to how much background reading I should be doing, how much preparation for lectures, which books I should be buying (do I wait and see if they tell us in lectures or is it on the intranet, and if I wait will there be any left by that time?), I don't know what the difference between a lecture and a tutorial is..... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH! Panic!

My only assurance is Becky telling me to chill out cos I'm a stress head, which is probably true. And like my Mum says (my beacon of calm), they can't expect you to know everything in the first week. Everyone else on my course is probably thinking the same things I am right now. So I think I probably do need to just chill out. We'll see...