Weekly Writing Challenge: Image vs. Text “My Freshman Year”

Posted on February 19, 2013 Updated on February 22, 2013

So this week’s writing challenge should be fun. “Detail a three to five step story or process, and illustrate each of the steps with something visual.”

I didn’t have to search hard for I once wrote a photo-story about my freshman year at AUS. Now the entire document ran for 22 pages, and consisted 10,000 words so I’m going to limit this post to just a few scenes. Also, the quality of the images isn’t superb as the images were taken somewhere between 2004-2005.

Part 1: The Beginning

When my parents first dropped my brother, SH and I at university, my excitement could not be contained. I thought everything about the university was fabulous. The room was clean, the domed university buildings looked beautiful and the picture of the huge greasy Whopper burger adoring a portion of the cafeteria wall was unmatched. The only nagging worry I had concerned my roommate. Why? I don’t want to elaborate, but let’s just put it this way; the only reason I’m still living with my family in the same house is because they are my family and they have to tolerate me.

Part 2: AUS stands for “Always Under Stress”

I started getting really depressed. Even though people thought I had so many friends, they were just acquaintances really. Things got even worst when we had a holiday because of the bereavement period after the death of Sheikh Zayed (Allah yir7amo). When we returned, we rushed through the courses and each class was extended for ten minutes to make up for the classes that we missed. They were only ten minutes, but schedules got extended so much that a not –so –extreme case was that my Caculus 2 2pm class began at 3pm. The workload was unbearably stressful.

Part 3:  Chemistry was my favorite

During the Spring semester, things were fine. Fine is an understatement. They were the bomb! I had so much fun seriously. During the entire semester, my favorite course was Chemistry 2. Once the professor announced the details of a quiz, and after he had already erased everything from the whiteboard and started with the new chapter, one of the students asked, “Sir, what chapter is the quiz on?”

He gave him one of his tiny smiles and said, “You need calibration.”

There were many stories, but overall, chemistry was my favorite.

Part 4: AH – the mic holder

I helped some of the Mass Com students with their movie projects because one of my friends took the Media Production course. I had helped her with her transcript. It was funny, because I added a line in the middle, and then later on, she came to me and said that the professor left her whole transcript and pointed out to my line saying he liked it. He was one of those really demanding professors. He kept on rejecting one of the student’s transcripts (The third friend in the next paragraph) until she made a comedy movie about how the professor kept on rejecting her transcripts…that he liked.

So anyhow, I worked for the movie as a microphone holder, on a Thursday, back in the dorms. It took so long, and I had to stand on my feet for the whole time so by the end of the shooting, my feet were aching. When someone else needed that friend as a microphone girl on Saturday I volunteered to replace her because she had so much work to do. It took so long and I had to return home to do my homework late at night. Then on Sunday a third friend was re-shooting her movie, because it turned out that her microphone was not working. Immediately I jumped at the opportunity to volunteer. This time, they nearly closed the Student Center while we were still inside – that’s how long it took. Then, on Monday my friend (the first one) was shooting the last scenes, starting from 3 pm. While the other two took place in the Leopards’ office, my friend’s took place in the new MCM studio in the Design Building. Later, on Wednesday, I joined them for a few minutes while they were editing the movies, and made sure everybody wrote A – the – mic – holder in the credits.
Then I went to watch the movies when they were being screened in class. I got introduced to the professor, and he told me to change to Mass Communication, and I was like, “No, thank you.” Even though they do have more fun and people say that Mass Comm. suits me better since I love writing…especially with professors who on their first day in that class, had said, “Welcome to the course, where to pass, you have to fail all your other courses.”

Part 5: The Engineering Buildings

I guess every building has its story; the physics building, the chemistry building, the design building. I think it’s about time I talk about the engineering buildings, since they will soon be my permanent residence. The school of engineering lies very far from the rest of the schools. It’s seems to be in a world of its own. There’s something very funny about the engineering buildings; no matter how many engineers the two buildings create, there are so many engineering flaws with them.

For instance,the least you would expect are working vending machines, right? Also, there always seems to be friction between the Electrical and Computer students, as Electrical claim to be more superior than the Computer students. Once, there was a power outage and the computers naturally went off. An electrical engineering student told a computer engineering student, “See? Without us, you people cannot work. “

The CMP student said, “Apparently some people are not doing their work properly.” Which was why there was an outage in the first place.

Part 6: Finally Finals’ week 

The semester was finally coming to an end. This was my calender during that semester.

During Finals’ week, by the time I started studying for my MTH 205, it was 12 am. For the first time in my life, I actually stayed up the whole night. I normally treasured sleep. Even during the international exams back during high school, I never lost sleep because of a final.  By 10 am the next morning, I was a walking zombie. On Sunday, again, I stayed up all night – for the second time in my life.I had NGN 111 at 8 am the following morning, and ECO 201 at 11 am. I came out of the NGN 111 (statistics) exam feeling aweful and making a mental promise that I was not going to stay up again, no matter what the final is, and no matter how little prepared I am. What happened was that in one of the questions, the answer was supposed to be less than 1, and yet I got over 1, so that hinted to me that there was a miscalculation. I had to repeat the entire question, and I was already tired, and couldn’t focus….overall, my paper was a mess. The ECO was challenging, but I was glad when it was over. Since I was still in my first year, a lot of exams were still being done in the Sports complex, and the picture below was one walk to remember.

Weekly Writing Challenge: Image vs. Text