So today I attended Dawson College’s “Welcome Day” which is pretty much just an orientation session to let students know their way around and what to expect. So I’ve had a run down on things, and everything seems about as peachy as things can be.

I don’t know anyone in my Computer Science class, and I doubt many of them do either, so there’s a very strange aura of silence during question periods, and the lectures from the staff is once in a while interrupted by quiet laughter when one of the teachers make a dry joke. There’s about 40-something students in my class I suppose. Majority would have to be male with either 1 or 3 girls to balance things out. From what I’ve noted there is, I believe to be, 4 Asians in the group including me. So I’d say its a rather focused group.

The main concentration of the course will be in the programming classes. The core language of choice is to be Java, with some minor introductions to C#. A cool thing I’ve learnt is that Dawson happens to be in a “Academic Alliance” with Microsoft, which means that I’ll be able to request various development software and operating systems for free. Sounds too good to be true, but that seems like the gist of this alliance. Amongst Java, there will be also some Visual Basic involved. In terms of Internet applications, there will be stuff on HTML, CSS, and XML I think. Databasing will be concentrated on SQL and Access. Operating Systems will be about UNIX systems and Windows Server systems. There will also be various courses on networking, and computer hardware. Sounds pretty exciting.

Seems like everyone dislikes the Internet Applications teacher. Apparently she’ll be boring and relatively simple to pass. My Fundamentals of Computer teacher on the other hand, should be pretty swell. However, it seems as though my Logic of Programming teacher will be on the tougher side of things. Overall I don’t think my courses are too bad. Not perfect, but nothing horrible either.

The school itself is huge and despite following the tour group, I already feel lost. With an estimated 7,600+ full-time day students alone, there are numerous hallways that lead everywhere, with a total of 8 floors (under and above ground floors together), and different ‘wings’ that are somehow incoherently connected with eachother in the most unintuitive way. My locker is desperately small, and I can forget about throwing an average backpack in there (not that I will anyways with the amount of books). Guess you can’t have everything.

So right now there are a few things about college, or as we in Quebec like to call it, Cegep. The main one being that I hope I’ll atleast see someone that I know or am familiar with. Especially when I’m lost. Then I won’t feel so alone. Another thing would be that I hope I don’t get lost, but as it is, I probably will. The next thing I hope would be that non of my teachers are those “difficult” types or asshats. And I guess the final thing on my mind that everyone probably has, is that I really hope I can pass this course.