My mage spends at least a week if not more (in game time) at each Guild before moving on in order to learn more of spells. Does anyone else do the same sort of things?

My current character usually spends the first day visiting a town checking out the local shops and chatting with the locals. He then retires to an inn to reads the "guide to " book to see where to go the next day.

Yes! Plenty of people do! I one of them.
There is in fact a topic about it http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1082413-roleplaying/

Yup. Followed by a veerrry long time studying and learning at the University, punctuated by a few, generally local, field trips. :dance:

Yes, I do this. Helena tends to spend quite a bit of time in a City before she moves on. Three days in the Imperial City after she got out of the sewers, and she's already spent two days in Chorrol.

Typically just strolls around the city to see the sites, visit the stores and check out the local hunks =). Camarilla has no real sense of urgency about anything, nor any planned career or ambitions of mastering a guild or some such institution.

Regardless of guild hall location, and regardless of spell type I can purchase and use, I must travel to the Arcane University's Practice Rooms to practice and live (for a week, such as yourself), with a field trip to the local Sinkhole Cave for testing on humans, or the local Sideways Cave for testing on creatures and undead.

On my new character who is gonna do the Mages guild questline, I am going to do a special thing for the Arcane University.

Before he can do any of the quests, he must first graduate, with his chosen school of magic, while studying two others.
I was thinking of getting to Expert Level in his chosen skill, and making a good spell for his other two, that utilize both of the schools, in a way that would work together.
And he will have to pay for his room and board charges, so when he is not studying, he will run about doing odd jobs. It will cost him 250 gold a week to sleep in the University, and make use of the Training rooms.

This should work pretty well. My character graduated as a mystic archer. Her University Advisor was the battlemage, Boderi Farano. Buffy majored in illusion, with a secondary specialty in restoration. She did fairly well in the other magic schools except for destruction. Um, let's just say she passed that course. Even to this day, she uses destruction mostly for cooking and heating bath water and lighting torches. Good thing she knows how to use a bow to hurt stuff.

While a student there, she lived in the Chironasium, with its nine safe storage containers and two usable beds.

I've recently started out as a Argonian theif named Shadow-In-The-Sea who works as a hunter. He was caught smuggling Skooma over the Black Marsh/Cyrodill border and was sent to Anvil on the prison ship. He was not locked away in jail(thanks to the Argonian council where his father is a member), he was released in Anvil and is never allowed to return to his community in Black Marsh. The first thing he does when he gets off the ship is admire the beauty of the harbor and he kept his eye on sea as he walked along. He then bumped into Maiq who told him about naked people. Shadow-In-The-Sea, was confused by this and just passed him. He then jumped into the ocean and swam to the bottom to reflect upon his life alone.

My character is a member of both Mage's and Fighter's Guilds. He only joined the Mage's Guild to gain access to the Arcane University so that he may enchant items. I have a mod (or maybe it does it anyway) that puts altars in all Guild Halls, so he seldom visits the University anymore. He will visit the Fighter's Guild Hall always as he uses them for free lodging. He will start asking for contracts when he get's to Anvil. Right now, he is doing everthing he can to help the locals with their problems.

Yes, it is a shame that someone like Bobo the Barbarian can't sell all his hard-earned shiny stones and trinkets, gather up his gold, go to the guild of mages to have his ogre-smashing hammer enchanted. Just because he's dumb as a hollow stump and can't even spell the word majik, doesn't mean his gold isn't good. I mean, my character is in the guild of mages so she has no problem, but the guild sure seems to have kind of a monopoly if you're not smart enough to know some magic. Even if you have that freezing tower of wizardry, you still have to 'know and be able to cast the appropriate magical effects, blah, blah, blah'.

It seems that the enterprising young mage would go into buisness crafting and selling custom enchanted items to the Bobo's of Tamriel.

:rofl: