Fresher Simulator: O-Week

Fresher Simulator: O-Week

A choose-your-own adventure survival quiz

1. Welcome (Start here)

You’re a fresher (our condolences) arriving at Dunedin airport for the first time ever. You marvel at all the butt-fuck-nowhere around you. Off to collect your luggage! Where did you fly in from, again?

A: Auckland (Go to 11)

B: Somewhere else (Go to 2)

 

2. You’re on the shuttle hurtling into the city, and you’re so excited to see your new hall of residence! After a bit of a bumpy ride, you’re dropped off straight outside the hall you so carefully selected, based on…

A: Academics and activities (Go to 3)

B: Well, you didn’t get your first choice actually, but this seems fine too (Go to 3)

C: LESHGO (Go to 4)

 

3. Settling in is going well, and you love your new home for the year. Your RA asks what your plans for the week are…

A: Ori festivities! Toga, baby (Go to 7)

B: Getting comfortable in your hall and making friends (Go to 8)

C: Alcohol. Now. (Go to 9)

 

4. You’re not here to fuck spiders, and you probably won’t end up fucking people, either. You skip your hall’s orientation and get straight to pre-ing up… 

A: Drink at your hall (Go to 14)

B: Drink at your mate’s hall (Go to 5)

C: Drink under the bridge (Go to 17)

 

5. The box you just bought is heavy in your arms as you make your journey alone in the streets of North D. You quickly realise you have no idea where you actually are, but you think the botanic gardens may be nearby.

A: Keep walking in the open (Go to 6)

B: Cut through the gardens to get your bearings (Go to 16)

C: Phone a friend (Go to 12)

 

6. The gardens are too intimidating at this stage - a good call, you think to yourself, just as you hear cackling and a whooshing noise behind you. Due to the chicken egg shortage, you’re hit in the back of the head with a 2kg ostrich egg instead, killing you instantly.

GAME OVER

 

7. It’s Toga Party, you have a bedsheet safety-pinned to yourself, and you’re feeling your drunken Ancient Roman fantasy. This is what uni is all about, you think. In fact, you’re so literally wrapped up in toga that you don’t notice all of your closest confidantes sneaking up behind you. You’re stabbed 23 times in the back. Et tu, Breatha?

GAME OVER

 

8. You’re happy to stay in this evening and do some self care, and maybe socialise with your hallmates a little. A quick shower to unwind first, perhaps. You head into the common showers, strip off, and step in. You’re in the middle of showering when it dawns on you: you forgot to bring your soap. Luckily, there’s one in the corner already. It’s kinda manky, but it can’t be that bad, right? Wrong. You immediately catch athlete’s foot, prion disease, and a long-extinct form of avian flu. Covid, too, for good measure.

GAME OVER

 

9. You’ve got a decent buzz on and you’re ready to try and infiltrate Castle Street without getting clocked as a fresher. Tonight’s theme is ‘CEOs and Office Hoes’, so office wear is the go. Maybe the right outfit will do the trick?

A: Dress up for the theme (Go to 10)

B: Don’t dress up (Go to 5)

 

10. You and your mates are dressed to oppress in your white collar outfits, ready to live out a Wolf of Wall Street-esque bender. If you pace yourself, you’re certain you can make it to Castle every night this week. Your dreams are stopped short, unfortunately, as sirens blare and your hands are cuffed behind your back. Your CEO costume was too convincing, and now you’re being arrested for money laundering in a tragic case of mistaken identity.

GAME OVER

 

11. No.

GAME OVER

 

12. You wind up at a party, and you’re not entirely sure how you got there, but you’re having a time and a half. You’re pretty wasted, and in your drunken stupor you’re set on one thing only…

A: Hooking up with a stranger (Go to 14)

B: Going back to halls to sober up before bed (Go to 8)

C: MORE (Go to 13)

 

13. The room melts as the uppers and downers duke it out in your nervous system, and you think you can hear the hum of the universe, expanding, dying, proliferating the same cosmos that runs through you and which you run through in return. In an instant you have single-handedly created a tear in the space-time continuum, forced to relive O-Week for all eternity.

GO BACK TO 1

 

14. Drinking in your hall’s common area with strangers was fun at first, but as 10pm approaches, the vibes are getting stale. You’re only halfway through your drinks and people are starting to leave, so you…

A: Head out and keep drinking (Go to 5)

B: Go home with the desired gender (Go to 15)

 

15. Your drunken conquest was a success - or so you thought. You can’t really remember, anyway. Days later, as you flick through Critic, you find an eerily familiar Moaningful Confession: a hookup horror story about a drunk breatha who shit their one night stand’s bed and blamed it on the cat. Realisation dawns: you were that drunk breatha. You survived, but at what cost?

GAME OVER (meow)

 

16. You walk through the gardens. And walk. And walk. It’s gotta end somewhere, right? The trees all look the same. You decide to set up shelter for the night. Days pass. You improve your campsite and learn to forage for food: endangered birds and half-drunk RTDs mostly. It’s not too bad, you think to yourself, you could get used to it – and you do.

GAME OVER

 

17. Wait, which bridge? You find yourself stumbling up the Leith, waiting to hear the siren song of your new best friends. But you have been deceived. There is no bridge. There never has been. You’re all alone.

GAME OVER

This article first appeared in Issue 0, 2024.
Posted 4:13pm Monday 19th February 2024 by Lotto Ramsay.