The First Day
An Introduction to The Program
I won't do "daily" entries much down the line, but here at the start I feel like it's relevant since it's all so new!
Today was very much introductory. First up, was a "Welcome to the Program" lecture, I got to sit down with the 160-170 or so other students in the Social Work Programs first year bundle. We got to see our course administrators, the heads of faculty for the Department of Social Work, had some general walk-through of the systems we're gonna be using (apparently this year they switched to Canvas, I hear mixed opinions on this but apparently their old system was even worse 
).
After this we were assigned groups - obviously 150+ people is a bit of a nightmare to do assignments for so we got split into smaller subclasses of about 30 per class. So, these people will be my immediate classmates for the next two semesters at least! (Unclear if the groups stay after the first year?).
"Intro to Social Work"
This was the first actual class! Sort of. Still very much introductory, we mostly discussed the course literature - collected works like "Perspectives on Social Problems" and "Essentials of Social Work", both by authors Meeuwisse & Swärd. We had a fun exercise of not introducing ourselves, but rather introducing the person sitting next to us, by first chatting for 10 minutes and learning about each other! A bit of an exercise in listening and quick notetaking. I already know I'm gonna love this course.
Socializing with the Marshals
Get it? Social-izing? Cuz Social Work? Anyway. In Sweden, we have kind of a "frat house culture", but it's not quite that at the same time. There are student unions associated with the individual faculties, so the Social Work Program has its own union, you pay for a membership and you do things like travel together, get access to pub events, and there is a house on campus for those events specifically for that union. So, kind of a frat, except you don't live there and it's not toxic as fuck. There's even a uniform - in Sweden, students are often seen wearing these "overalls", where each color set represents the faculty or union you're part of. You can't just get the overalls without a trial by fire though. This spooked me at first, but turns out it's fairly straight-forward, at least for this program. All you have to do is be a bartender for a night at one of the pub events.
I found this out after the "marshals" (as those wearing the overalls are called) gave a guided tour of the campus grounds for us. At the end, everyone dispersed from the "frat house", and it was really just me and some of the Marshals and older year students in the house. So, hey, I wanna get involved. I tell them, we have some tea, it's nice and cozy - and boom, signed up for the bartending. So, October 30th on the Halloween Pub Event, I will be a bartender for the night! Fun!
Then I went to sit in the library for a bit to sort out some IT stuff. All-in-all, a successful day! 
Tomorrow is big - 5 hours of lectures, from 9 to 15, with an hour break. That'll be a gauntlet for sure. But I'm ready!