I've played lots of freerolls before, but this was my first time I actually bought in to a tournament. It was only a $.60 buy-in, but you have to start somewhere, right? Anyway, there were 185 players, and 8-minute levels. With those levels and slow players, I think we averaged 5 hands per level, or almost 2 levels per orbit. Needless to say, if you don't catch some cards pretty quickly, you can find yourself in trouble fast. Which is where I found myself about 30 hands in - around 1000 chips left and blinds of 200/400 if I remember correctly. I was just getting junk every hand. Then, things picked up a bit -

Push with AJ, get called by QQ, catch an A on the flop to double up
Push a flopped set of 4's, get called by 2 people, and almost triple up
Steal a few blinds when people were on the bubble.

and a few other hands that I can't remember.

it finally got down to 10, but the final table only had room for 9. I was towards the bottom in chip count, and the blinds were still increasing, so I couldn't sit for too long. I got ATs, pushed, and was called by A9 and QJ - a Jack hit on the turn to knock me out in 10th place - just before the final table.

All in all, it was a pretty fun experience. Finishing in the money didn't hurt, either.