On Tuesday, I went to another event put on by the same grad student organization that hosted The Amazing Race on Monday. That night, the event was trivia, and I was with the same team again. The Trivia questions were surprisingly hard. I was expecting a lot of pop-culture stuff, but they covered more serious topics, like geography and politics. One of the questions: What country in NATO has no standing army? I guessed Costa Rica, because I know they have no army, but I wasn't sure if they were in NATO.
The answer is...Iceland!
Anyway, Trivia was alright, but we were all pretty tired of it by the end. Afterwards, my team went out with a few other teams to a bar in town. At the bar, we were all settling in, having a nice time chatting when suddenly someone got on stage and announced that it was time for...dun dun dun...trivia! Just when we thought we'd escaped! But this trivia was a bit more fun, more focused on pop culture. Lots of questions about the Olympics, of course.
On Wednesday, the grad activity of the day was volleyball. Several members of our team couldn't come, so we merged with another team. Honestly, we did terribly in volleyball. I think we may have had the lowest score in the tournament. In our first game, we were matched against a really good team, full of tall, athletic-looking people. They completely stomped on us. I think the score was like, 16-2 or something. It was a bit discouraging, but we still had fun. We got to play again, because there were so few teams in the tournament (I think some people had had enough of the "grad games" by that point.) Afterwards, my team and another team went out to a local burger place called Buns. It was delicious! They had every kind of topping and combination imaginable for your burger. I got one with goat cheese. I also got a salted-caramel, milkshake. Delicious. I also got sweet potato fries...and I have to say, they weren't the best I've had. Not crunchy enough for my tastes.
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| Buns Source |
On Thursday - we had the last of the grad student events. No games this time. It was orientation, and man, was it long. It went from 1-6:30! For the first few hours, we were just sitting in a big room, listening to people talk about healthcare and career building and all that kind of stuff. Then we got to talk to real-life UNC grad students, who told us all the secrets to grad school, like how to get your friends in to sporting events. After that, we went over to the gym, where there were a bunch of different organizations with tables set up. Not clubs, but things like the UNC Book Store and The Center for Environmental Safety. That kind of fun stuff. Honestly, it was pretty boring. They had allotted an hour and half for it in the schedule, and it really only took about ten minutes to get through. I mostly just wandered around with my friends from my team and we tried to find free stuff. I got a tee shirt, a tote bag, a couple pads of sticky notes, some pens, and a koozie. Yeah! I also updated my voter registration. Woo hoo!
Then it was the moment we had all been waiting for: Free Food. The grad school put on a really nice reception for us, complete with delicious finger foods and desserts. There was amazing coconut shrimp and really good brownies. I loved it! I also sat at a table with my friends from grad games and several English Lit PhD students, which was fun, especially since I'm an English major. We had a very in-depth discussion about bros, their various habits, and the different kinds there are. I had no idea there was so much variety - there are hipster bros, nerd bros, preppy bros...Maybe one of the PhDs will do a thesis about this phenomenon!
On Friday I had a very nerve-wracking speed-interviewing sesh which you can read more about here.
I also went to an interesting local event at the Carolina Inn...but I feel like this is a long enough blog post for now. Soon enough we'll be all caught up! We'll cover my exciting weekend next time...
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