For most International Students the Village is a fairly intimidating place. When I was first making my preparations for departure I had no idea what would await me when I arrived. I had visions of cramped dormitories and guys who didn’t understand personal space in the shower, mainly due to what I had seen in college movies so I think it’s perfectly reasonable to be a little bit apprehensive. In this post I’m going to hopefully set some things straight about what life is like in the Village. It’s entirely possible that some of this stuff might change next year but at least this way you’ll some sort of idea.

First things first: Arrival.

So you’ve taken the taxi/bus/been dropped off by a family member and now you’re standing in a car-park that looks scarily similar to every other car park around. In front of you is a cluster of squat brick buildings that look virtually identical except for the numbers stuck to some of them. To your right, depending on the car park you’ve chosen to arrive in, are three tall white buildings. That’s the new village but we’ll get to that later. For now what you need to do is follow the signs to the Admin building. If you’ve arrived after 11 p.m don’t panic, during check-in periods someone is always on call to help you get sorted out.

Basically during check-in the 3 big things you need to do are; 1) Sign a key contract, 2) Pick up a welcome pack and 3) Pick up a room inventory list.

1) This is basically a contract that makes you responsible for your key. If you lose it you get charged for a new one and the cost of replacing your lock. Try not to lose your key.

2) This one varies every semester. There is always a letter from the Village Director, a map of the Village, a list of the events that will be run over orientation and sometimes a USB key with the Village handbook on it. This stuff doesn’t really seem that vital but it can be useful to have an idea of what there is for you to do when you’re in an unfamiliar place.

3) I reckon this to be the most important item you can get. Essentially when you first move into your room there might be an awful lot of broken stuff. Filling out this form means you won’t get charged for any damage that was already there before you moved in.

When you’ve done all that you’ll have reached the stage known as; Orientation.

I consider this part to be the most important thing you can do in your first few weeks. You should try and get to know your flat-mates, find out what they like and don’t like, compare movie tastes, argue about music or sports and get legless together make every effort to meet as many people as you can. This isn’t the time to worry about your degree, whether or not you’ll do well, whether you need to take a folder or a laptop into lectures and if you should be a financial guild member or not (do it!).

I realise this might be the last thing parents want to read when they come to this blog but honestly these first weeks before University starts are crucial to how you’ll live. People who get on with their flat-mates are less likely to argue or fight with them over trivial issues and they tend to always have someone to watch TV with or share dinner. Your flat-mates are your family while you live in the Student Village. These are the people who will look after you when you’re sick, loan you some cash when that bank transfer has been delayed and be there for you when you get stressed about exams and assignments. Of course they will hopefully be able to rely on you for the same kind of treatment when things go wrong for them.

Finally after the exciting and hopefully fun orientation the boring University stuff starts. But as this post is primarily about the Village I think there are possibly a few misconceptions about what is and isn’t provided upon arrival.

For starters the brochures, at time of writing, advertise that every apartment has a phone. This is not the case as every phone was removed at the beginning of 2009. This is a little bit irritating but not a massive problem if you have Skype or a decent cell phone but it’s still something to be considered by International Students.

Secondly the internet is not free!! If you want to use internet in your room you’ve pretty much got to choose one of the ‘plans’ from the ISP the Village uses; Startech. The cheapest plan is $5 for an hour and the most expensive is $60 for a month. Honestly the internet isn’t so bad, there have been a lot of problems but I’ve had much the same experience with that of the University Internet. Again it’s not a deal breaker but some students are often a little put out by the fact they need to pay for, what some consider is, a basic need.

Finally upon arrival some students decide to purchase the linen pack. I might get into trouble for this, though I doubt it, but I’d advise against that. It’s probably cheaper to simply purchase the stuff individually from K-Mart which is about a 15 minute walk down the road; this goes for the cutlery pack too.

Overall I’d say the Village can be a great place to live. There are some fun events that you can attend, and some less fun ones that you can probably avoid, great people to meet, an easygoing environment to make friends and meet people from other countries, a pretty useful support network from the RA’s (my completely unbiased opinion as an RA there) and access to some handy facilities. If I hadn’t lived in the Village I probably wouldn’t have made as many great friends as I have nor had nearly as many of the exciting experiences. Some day, when I’m not liable to get sued, I’ll tell you guys about the naked Swede incident. But for now I think I will end this post here.