Yesterday saw the arrival of new students to the school of computing and with that the responsibility for myself and a selection of others in the school to show them around, make them feel at home and get them started on the computing ladder that is Linux. The two groups I got assigned to were a pleasure to meet and all seemed to be very keen on things and clued up about the course and the freshers week assignments given to them. I’m meeting them later this week to check how they are getting on and if they need help with anything. It feels good to be able to give people a helping hand in a new environment.

Unfortunately I’m going to have to end the post on a bit of a downer though. A friend who is also helping out had a little problem with someone in their group, and its a really stupid thing, but I was just so amazed to hear about it that I just have to post something. Everyone helping was supposed to give their mobile phone number and e-mail address out to everyone in their group(s) so that they had a point of contact for the first week or so in case they had any problems with anything. One un-named girl however got it into her head that accepting the phone number from my friend, despite it having been given to everyone else in her group, implied he was “giving her his number” in “that way” and refused to take it, and indeed was fairly shirty to him for the rest of the group meeting.

To me this is the height of immaturity and if it continues is certainly not going to get her anywhere at uni. If you are soon to go to uni or have just started my advice is to leave the child back at your old school gates and grow up a bit. After all you’ve only got 3 years until you’re in the work place and if you think your collegues and employers will take that kind of crap you’ve got another thing coming. Not to mention of course the chances of getting any help from those around you when you most need it being severely diminished.