Monash Enrolment/O-week Guide

[Mao]

I can't sleep. So here goes:

Monash Enrolment/O-Week Survival Guide
What you must go to, what you must not do, what clubs to join, what the biggest events are, and how to get wasted*
*Only intended for those of you who drink and don't drive. If you drink and drive, [rage]fucking die[/rage].

Enrolment

Important Jargons

Authcate - this is the student system at Monash, this is like your computer password for logging on to school computers, except you use it for everything, from timetable, exam results to emails and free Nigerian Scam.
You would probably already have a Monash Authcate Login/Password, if you do not because mail hasn't arrived: https://mdsadmin.monash.edu.au/cgi-bin/register

my.monash - https://my.monash.edu.au/ - this is your student portal. This will now become your home page (or one of your favourites). In here, you access your timetable, lecture notes, emails, love-letters, over-due library fines, and how many Monash Students are now using Google Apps. You have access to Gmail (basically unlimited storage), google docs (basically unlimited plagiarism) and calendar (basically no one uses this). [I might write a short guide soon on how to integrate gmail/google docs/calendar with current google account/android phone/Macintosh if anyone is interested]

WES - Web Enrolment System is where you do your enrolment. Select your units, apply for CSP, check results for units, cry over how much money is going into your HECS, etc.

Library - Lib is the library home page, there is quite a bit of stuff in there to learn, many advanced functions. You're probably going to have to sit through a session explaining what the library's about in at least one of your subjects. Libraries have names: HAL (Hargrave-Andrew Library, home to the Fibonacci, the Science/Eng coffee shop, the kebab house, and is the Sci/Eng/Med library), Matheson (the arts/commerce library, home to the Den, a place you'll eat at almost religiously because it's cheaper than the campus center) and Law Library (self explanatory, very quiet, multistory, leather couches, good for sleeping in)

Useful things given by the library - ezproxy (basically unlimited access to almost all journal articles/databases), $20 (you don't pay overdue fines until they accumulate to $20, reset every semester), NOT power points (you WONT find a power point at a library to charge your laptop), NOT internet (you WONT find a strong signal to use your laptop because 1. you don't have battery and 2. the signal is shared between you and 21325382131204 other people).

Menzies Building - Icon of Monash Clayton Campus, designed by UoM Engineers, it is long, tall, very large surface area, and prone to fall over. To prevent it from falling over, a large square-box-shaped extension has been attached to the back, making it ridiculous. This is why you should not study Engineering at UoM. The more you study at monash the more you hear the phrase "I'm going to the top floor in Menzies", suicidal thoughts tend to increase with time spent studying.

Campus Center - It has a fish'n'chip shop, grilled chicken shop, pizza shop, overpriced coffee shop(s), Asian noodle place, the dodgiest restaurant chain called Meeting Point (takes up half the building), and 3 microwaves shared by over 9000 Asians in what is known as 'The Kitchen'. Upstairs is Airport Lounge aka Asian Central, since it is home to a range of very dodgy Asian food-stores (none of them are good). Also notable is Wholefoods (aka hippie central, vegetarian place with very very very old but very very comfy couches, also weed), Asian Grocery (you can find any drinks there) and Westpac and CBA. There is a post office, hair-dresser, optometrist and a GP.

Services offered at the campus center - NOT seating (you WON'T find seats to eat your food at lunch time), NOT microwave (you WON'T be patient enough to wait in line to heat up your food), thinner wallet (you WILL spend lots of money. The only way to not spend lots of money is if you skip classes and not come to uni, BIG money saver that is)

ATMs/EFTPOS - very few places have them. From personal experience, cash out is a bitch if you are not with CBA/ANZ/WestPac (that's the three ATMs), and one of the very few places with EFTPOS is Coffee HQ and the Den.

JAFFY - This is you. Just Another Fucking First Year. We'll put up with your i-have-no-idea-what-is-going-on-lol-this-is-so-cool-i-am-easily-arousedexcited-lets-be-a-loud-group-of-noobs mentality for a good three-quarters of the year [not really, no one cares]. When you stop being a jaffy you'll understand and chuckle to yourself.

The Nott - The Notting Hill Hotel, corner of Ferntree Gully Rd and Fosters Rd just north of Monash Clayton, this is where memories [bad bad bad memories] are made. You end up having to go to at least a couple of parties/drinks here.

Enrolment
Follow your instructions for paperwork. Get your authcate, go on wes and enrol, make sure info is correct.
To select units, go by your course plan (you should all have one, if not, look around, they're kinda scattered all over the faculty websites) to see prerequisites. When in doubt, consult http://www.monash.edu.au/pubs/2010handbooks/courses/index-ug-byfaculty.html
When selecting electives, make sure you look at all your options before making a choice. http://www.monash.edu.au/pubs/2011handbooks/units/index-byfaculty.html
Don't know what majors to choose? (you may have to decide now to choose your units) http://www.monash.edu.au/pubs/2011handbooks/aos/index-ug-byfaculty.html

Once you've done all that on wes, you're all set to get your ID card. Go to your compulsory session, do not miss it, but you'll then realise it's absolutely pointless by the end of it, no one will have enough balls to ask any questions about anything useful. You'll get used to the idea that you don't really know what's going on and just go with the flow.

On enrolment day
You will get your ID card and etc. Wear something nice, practice your smile. Your ID photo will be taken today through a webcam. This will be the first thing you do, Student Service Center is located at the campus center. Take all your paperwork. I must stress this photo stays with you until your degree finishes, so make sure you don't look ridiculous [I sneezed just before the photo, thank you hay fever, I look like a red monkey-ass retard for the remainder of my undergraduate degree].

Any other 'compulsory' activities you can probably get away with not going. Go to it anyways for about 5 minutes, it's usually admin people showing people how to use WES, but you would have already done all that anyways. Go see the faculty office if you have any problems, those people actually know what they are talking about sometimes, anyone else have no idea ever. Go see who else is doing your degree, maybe run into your primary school crush or something. Good luck.

Oh, and if you get into one of those sessions, realise it's useless, don't have the school mentality of 'uh-oh, the teacher's going to go nuts if I leave'. You are in uni now, no one cares. Repeat after me: no one cares. Come and go as you please [the decision is now in your hand, you decide what to do and not do to ensure you don't fail.

You will also see these people wearing bright T-shirts with 'host scheme' written all over it. These people are volunteers organising orientation events (they are anywhere from 2nd to 20th year students). It will be a good idea to talk to them and get to know the social sides of things. If you like drinking/party, the camps are a must. You'll get to know quite a few people, makes O-week more exciting.

Oh, and drinking on enrolment day? Rare, but there is Sir John Monash Bar located on first level in the campus center right next to the Host Scheme advertising venue. If you happen to be stuck in a lecture theatre, befriend people next to you. They generally don't bite, and knowing a few faces at the start of uni will make life a lot less awkward.

You go home depressed. You go home with lots of hope and excitement for the new year at uni.

Timetable
Now that you have gotten your flashy ID [if you lose it, please pay $60 for another one, these cards have microchips in it, not just your massive face], it's time to get your timetable. This may not work for a couple of days after you get your enrolment sorted out [allocate+ takes time to get used to the jaffy influx].

Allocate+ - http://allocate.cc.monash.edu.au/ - this is where you make your timetable. That's right, there's no teachers telling you which class to go to, you make your own timetable. This means you'll have to try to make it all compact to avoid large breaks in-between events, leave some room for lunch, get up late, leave early, etc. It is quite an art to get a good timetable, so before you go in to allocate+, try MUTTS, and play around with your timetable looks pretty. Then go in to allocate+ and enter your preferences.

Allocate+ requires you to put in several preferences, almost always you'll get your first preference. Make two timetables in MUTTS just in case your first preferences fail. This is applicable to first year because each subject has like 1.3 billion people and almost everything has a repeat. When you get to second and third year, you'll get a feel for clashes, and 'predetermined timetable' with about 0.2 degrees of freedom and over 9000 anal-ness. Beyond that, the third/fourth/fifth/sixth preference are really just there for the sake of it. Disregard them.

In case you don't get allocated the timetable you want, email allocate+ admins and your lecturers why they should let you change to new streams (usually stating 'I have to work because I am poor and I have to support my little sister who is in a coma' will do the trick). If it is a lecture stream: don't bother changing, just rock up to that lecture, no one cares. If it is a tute, email, and regardless of outcome, just rock up and tell your tute instructor 'I have a clash, this is my only option oops'. If it is a lab, email, if it doesn't work, tough luck, arrange everything else around it. LABS ARE IMPORTANT.

Oh, and you don't have to rush to get your allocate+ preferences in before everyone else. You won't miss your spot [if you submit by the due date], and even if you do, mass harassing university academic staff will do the trick, always.


Some O-week information

Newspapers - subscription services will be sold at very cheap rates (pick up at bookshop). You will buy one even if you don't think you will. You will make a commitment to pick it up even though you won't. You will pick it up about 3 times in the year and each time it will turn into a baseball bat for hitting people. You will then throw it away because no one likes carrying around the Age.

MSA - you will join MSA (Monash Student Association) and pay ~$60, you will think there are lots of benefits/discounts. You will then join every free club there is. You will receive so much free stuff it will be ridiculous. None of the free stuff will be useful. You won't use the MSA card much (if at all).

Clubs - you will join many of these because you joined MSA. You will go to many bbqs because food = free (you never paid for MSA, remember?). You will wait in line for a small amount of food, you will get food poisoning but it doesn't matter because you will get free alcohol also (again, you never paid for MSA). You will skip lectures to go to these bbqs, you will chill with friends on over-crowded lawns. You will watch people skull beer. Great fun, over-populated by shy jaffys and old-fags.

O-week party - good fun. Jaffys go because it's their first uni party. Second years go because they want to pick up young and naive jaffys. 5th years go because they have done nothing else their entire life.

O-week classes/workshops - don't go to any of these. They're pointless, really. REALLY REALLY pointless. The only people you'll meet here are people who actually attend these classes/workshops. (I know.. how frightening..)


PS, any offense [intended or not] is actually aimed at you, yes, YOU.

[Akirus]

I can't sleep.

Oh, and

Menzies Building - Icon of Monash Clayton Campus, designed by UoM Engineers, it is long, tall, very large surface area, and prone to fall over. To prevent it from falling over, a large square-box-shaped extension has been attached to the back, making it ridiculous. This is why you should not study Engineering at UoM.

lol'd

[Mao]

Updated with a couple of things. =]

[crappy]

wow this is awesome! thanks Mao

[the.watchman]

wow this is awesome! thanks Mao

Yeh, I'm not going to uni for ages, but I've got a good idea what's around and what's gonna happen during 0-week!

[ninwa]

Friggin' brilliant.

Just one point though:

In case you don't get allocated the timetable you want, email allocate+ admins and your lecturers why they should let you change to new streams (usually stating 'I have to work because I am poor and I have to support my little sister who is in a coma' will do the trick). If it is a lecture stream: don't bother changing, just rock up to that lecture, no one cares. If it is a tute, email, and regardless of outcome, just rock up and tell your tute instructor 'I have a clash, this is my only option oops'.

If you're one of those poor buggers who got into law, this doesn't apply to you.
IN LAW, YOU NEED TO STICK WITH THE STREAMS/TUTES YOU ARE ENROLLED IN because your stream lecturer marks your exam and if you don't know what your stream lecturer likes in their answers (because everyone's slightly different) because you've rocked up in a different stream all semester you're pretty screwed. Also they actually call the roll in the tutes and the tutes are marked and count for 10% of your mark, so you'll get 0 if you attend the wrong tute.

[kendraaaaa]

Awesome read! Thanks

[Fyrefly]

 

[Glockmeister]

You forgot to mention the John Medley Library

[hard]

LOGIN ERROR
Your login details are fine, but you are not known by the system.

This is what happened when i tried logging into allocate+ ??

[methodsman]

LOGIN ERROR
Your login details are fine, but you are not known by the system.

This is what happened when i tried logging into allocate+ ??

Allocate+ is step 6 of the enrollment process - you haven't done step 5 (going to enrollment day) - maybe that's why it didn't work ?

[Damo17]

LOGIN ERROR
Your login details are fine, but you are not known by the system.

This is what happened when i tried logging into allocate+ ??

Allocate+ is step 6 of the enrollment process - you haven't done step 5 (going to enrollment day) - maybe that's why it didn't work ?

It should be fine for Allocate+, I have already put in my preferences for all my labs and tutorials/support classes. You just use WES to enrol in units and then you should be able to login to Allocate+.

[slothpomba]

Just thought around now would be a decent time to resurrect this...

Stickying it wouldnt be bad either

[Gloamglozer]

...  how many Monash Students are now using Google Apps (that's right! Monash email is GMAIL!)

And so does UoM now. 

Menzies Building - Icon of Monash Clayton Campus, designed by UoM Engineers, it is long, tall, very large surface area, and prone to fall over. To prevent it from falling over, a large square-box-shaped extension has been attached to the back, making it ridiculous. This is why you should not study Engineering at UoM.

Or you could think of if this way: This is why you should study Engineering at UoM, so you can screw up the architecture of other universities.  haha

[zhenzhenzhen]

the new asian place upstairs is pretty decent i think forgot the name tho