Engineering a geography degree

Nothing anyone tells you can really prepare you for the extreme difference of the educational experiences you get at college. It's just brilliant - apart from the first two days spent wandering around campus like a bewildered, headless chicken, not knowing if you should follow where your head rolled or keep walking onwards.

That was my impression of Monday. I was lost and alone, like nearly all the other first-year students. We could easily recognise each other from the similar expressions of uncertainty and the darting eyes scouring the paths (and there are many of them) for directions to the concourse or Arβs na Mic Leinn, or whatever that place was called where we were meant to be a half hour ago.

Any questions for directions were answered with: "I'm only in first year, I don't know." Some just gave up the battle, preferring instead to sit in the comfort of the Bialann, collapse exasperated on the lawns to soak up the sunshine - or maybe just get to know the bar staff in the student pub.

Luckily enough, the students union was providing campus tours all week, taking us poor freshers under their wings and leading us through the labyrinths of corridors and the maze of walkways that lead to the buildings.

Reluctantly, after I overcame my stubbornness and the idea that I'd get to know my way around the place "after a while" and because my patience ran out and I stared making circular tracks, I took a campus tour organised by the student union. Thanks Ciara, I was lost without it.

All I can say is, it's a far cry from the convent gardens of St Vincent's I knew so well. The feeling that comes to you as you walk around campus on your first day is very alienating, especially if you're on your own. My "roomie" was registering the following day because she is studying science, so, like many others, I went to register alone. It is such a weird, strange feeling to walk around an area that is connected to school, but feels, looks and acts nothing like the system we were used to - in any shape or form.

What really got to me was the fact that I knew no one - but that didn't last long. The "Gunk" that comes in moving from secondary to university is something you just cannot prepare yourself for - I was walking around consciously tightening my neck muscles to hold my jaw up before I started catching flies.

Being told that there are 225 engineering students from the different disciplines is quite a shock; the lecture halls are always full to capacity (for now). My 32-hour week made the lazy part of me think I should have done arts - or anything else! I have not heard of any other first years who can top the engineering hours. But then the rational side of me thinks it's a cool career with good salaries and no other career I can think of could solve my curiosity about how things work and feel and are made and why?

College life is definitely not the lazy life it is sometimes portrayed as. Or am I just doing it wrong?