Freshers has come and gone, so where do i begin?
Perhaps we will start at the beginning and go from there. But don’t worry i won’t bore you with average descriptions of every event… just average descriptions of some of them.
Freshers, like always, was a little bit of whirlwind. It all started with the move in days on the 15th/16th. Jordan and I were lucky enough (or lazy enough) to be on the Students’ Union stall in Augustine house for the registration event taking place on that day, allowing us a great opportunity to discuss exactly what the Students' Union is/does. Jordan and I made quite a good team. Jordan juiced up on as many Carabao energy drinks as he could keep down and me trying to support but ultimately curb Jordan's new found canned energy, seemed to work well with the students we interacted with. Ultimately giving a very accurate reflection of the Students’ Union and what they can expect over the year.
Saturday night started, as always with the design of your own Welcome Freshers t-shirt. This events always seems to go down well and is a great opportunity for people to mix and mingle in a 21st century manner.
Moving onto Monday, probably my favourite event, the games night. This hasn’t ever really been done before, an evening event not centred around alcohol… i know, shocking. This revolutionary idea seemed to really take off with a thoroughly well attended night, with The Lounge looking like some sort of spaceship with the amount of cables on show, although i felt as though i was in my element, playing games from my childhood. It was also a great event for me as for some reason freshers flu had hit me a week early, so having an event like this allowed me some recovery time… I’m getting so old.
Another standout event was, of course, Freshers' Fayre. It never ceases to amaze me how many people turn up to this during the course of the day and just how hard working and dedicated our societies and sports team members are to recruitment. People (of course mostly first years but not always) turn up in their droves to sign up to the sport or society of their choice, with the hope of being a part of something outside their academics (including academic societies). I have always said that university is so much more than purely studying to get a degree, the extra curricular activities that take place are just as valuable. People seemed to share this idea as the union recorded more than 3,000 interest sign ups! Which is amazing.
The next major event that took place was the Massaoke, which happened on the Friday of welcome week. What more could you want from an event? Songs from all the eras? Middle aged men dressed in tin foil on the stage? Lots of people there to share it with you? Well… you had two of those. This was a great event (although we wish more of you would have turned up). However, for the people there (myself included), had a great time. Singing classics from even before Jordan and i were born!
The fact that the ‘crowd’ chanted for an encore says quite a lot about the feeling in The Lounge that night.
That feeling did seem to reflect the overall ‘vibe’ of welcome week this year. Those that attended the events had a great time and enjoyed the different array of events that we tried to put on this year.
This ‘vibe’ was on show once again at the Sabb Takeover quiz.
So the sabb quiz, where do i begin? Shall we say it was a disastrous success?
As we (the sabbs) walk into the Students’ Union building, about an hour before the quiz is due to start, we are greeted with the fact that there are no microphones...ah… well that’s good then. For the next hour the 4 of us sabbs are scrambling around trying to hook up various speakers together and then sync up a mic that jamie had found dusty at the bottom of a cupboard. We manage to get it working.... Not loud enough...too many people...too many voices. So being the innovative and adaptable people we are what do we do? Get someone at the back of the room repeating the questions… welcome to a student quiz everyone. Anyway, we managed to do the best with what we had and we hope that those of you who were there enjoyed it. Congratulations to “if you’re happy and you know it” who took home the prize money.
Overall freshers was a success. If we managed to have a positive effect on just 1 person then we have done our jobs in some way.
Ultimately I’ll leave you with this, don’t try and cram as many things into one day as Jamie did into his mouth. Spread them out. Look after yourselves.
Email - phil@ccsu.co.uk
Facebook - Phil Kloppenborg