At this time every year, thousands of year 12 students (and others) wait anxiously for their University offer rounds. And that time has finally come! Course offers were announced late last week and now we welcome thousands of eager new first years to the University of Adelaide. On behalf of AUScA, congratulations to everybody on their offers and we hope to make your experience at Adelaide as comfortable as possible.

Of course, for many new students, the transition to University can be daunting, even scary. First year courses in Biology, Chemistry or Mathematics can have over 500 students in a single lecture, and there can be over 300 in Geology or Physics. Not to mention turning up to practical classes in the first week and having to work for several hours with somebody you may have never met.

That is why it is important to find your place early at University. This year, AUScA are hosting our First Year Orientation Camp (O'Camp) at Woodhouse Activity Centre, Piccadilly between the 13th and 15th of February. This is before O'week to give new science students a great opportunity to meet their classmates and make new friends well before University actually begins. By the time week 1 comes around, there should be more than a few familiar faces around campus.

Also important in the transition into University is O'week itself. O'week is held between Monday 23rd and Friday 27th of February. Throughout the entire week, there will be plenty of fun social activities all around campus. The first day will be First Year Orientation Day, and in the afternoon, AUScA will host a special presentation entitled "The Student's Perspective of the First Year". You will get to hear advice from current students about how they dealt with their own transition into University, and get their perspective on their studies.

Of course, O'week wouldn't be without club sign-ups. The dates, locations and times for AUScA sign-ups is yet to be announced, but stay tuned.

Finally, we are holding our first social night of the year on the Thursday of O'week in the Austin & Austin Cafe, Lounge and Bar. We invite all current and new members of AUScA for a relaxing evening of board games, video games, nachos, and maybe a drink or two.

Best of luck, and we look forward to meeting you in the new year!

Even though it was only just past the Festive season and the New Year period, we still had a good turn out to our first meeting of the year. Special mention must go to Cao, who attended via Skype from Vietnam, and Gemma who is leaving the University of Adelaide for Melbourne later this year. Already, we are starting to piece together the program for 2015. Some events take a long time to organise, whereas others must be booked early to avoid clashes. A full program of our events has now been posted on our events page.

There has been much speculation and many creative ideas being proposed for our pub crawl theme. Our ideas man is definitely Jason, but many others on the committee are well involved in the creative process. A definite theme will be announced in the upcoming weeks. We also received an update from Brittany about the progress of the planning of the O'Camp. We will be sending out welcome letters in the upcoming week or so, and are hoping for an enthusiastic intake of first years.

After the meeting, five of us went scouting for venues for our pub crawl and social nights. Although some places were closed on Sundays, we still got a general idea for a route, to be announced in the near future.

Attendance:
Ben Geytenbeek (President)
Jason Oliver (Vice-President)
Brittany Howell (Secretary)
Angelica Barrientos (First Year Representative)
Tuong Cao (via Skype) (Third Year Representative)
Gemma Gransbury (Honours/Postgraduate Representative)
Matthew Bowie (General Committee)
Tim Aldridge (General Committee)

Apologies:
Irene Willcocks (Treasurer)
Bryan Banks (General Committee)
Jasmine Kelly (Second Year Representative)

Non-Attendance:
Luke Day (General Committee)

For a short period on January the 14th, the homepage was temporarily deleted by accident by the secretary. She has since apologised for the mistake, and fortunately the content was stored by the vice-president, and no data has been lost.
A warning to future editors is to avoid deleting the homepage

It's halfway through holidays, and yet things are already starting to get busy. There is lots of planning going on right now. Preparation for the O'camp is in full swing, with the secretary constantly posing new questions and thoughts about how to best run it. Meanwhile, the vice-president has his mind full of pub crawl ideas already, no hints yet though! Between now and O'week, however, we must keep ourselves busy to avoid cramming in planning of events whilst we are all trying to study, the most common pitfall of running a science club. And in the middle of it all, I decided to investigate this website business just to see what it could do!