Daunting but exciting
What a whirlwind these last few weeks have been! Becoming a university student is a daunting prospect but an exciting one all the same – at least that was the impression that older students gave me prior to joining Durham. But I remember a distinct feeling of apathy and lack of enthusiasm for a number of months leading up to move-in day about enrolling into a university. The cost, the time, leaving home, starting afresh; these factors were constantly playing on my mind, fuelling my apprehension.
Many of my friends began gearing up for the start of new chapters in their lives and family members began to incessantly ask if I was looking forward to university. I was still teetering, undecided, wondering if that new page really was for me. In the end, though, I committed. And I can safely say that, thus far, my decision was the right one.
Freshers’ week
Even though my journey in higher education has not been an especially long one quite yet (I am, after all, a first year who joined a matter of weeks ago), all those doubts, worries, concerns that embroiled my thoughts ahead of joining a university, were quelled in a matter of days.
A lot is said about Freshers’ Week. Often, it is overblown, perhaps even untrue (though I can confirm the notorious ‘freshers flu’ does indeed exist). It is a frantic week of activities, events, and opportunities where life feels like it is moving ten times as quickly and days, dates, timings, blur into one critical mass.
College is the centre
At Durham – which operates a collegiate system of accommodation – I found my Freshers experience revolve around college. With the sheer number of activities organised by the ‘Freps’ (volunteer students from years above), there was something, a multitude of things in fact, for everyone.
My college, Collingwood College, adopted the theme of ‘7 Days Around the World’, with each day of events revolving around a specific continent on Earth. We had, for instance, Eurotrip Tuesday. Each day was filled with activities ranging from dodgems to axe-throwing, to Zumba, to club nights, if clubbing wasn’t your vibe, there were movie nights and games nights instead. In essence, Freshers’ Week was almost entirely what you made of it.
It offered me the prime opportunity to engage with new people, try new activities and, ultimately, smooth the transition into university. Though at times I did find I had time to myself, these were invaluable periods for decompression and for settling in a little. Nothing, at first, felt particularly real; everything was a whirlwind. In actual fact, it still feels like that. But I have found that Freshers’ Week provided me with the ideal platform to interact with others in the exact same position as me and begin to feel the excitement about higher education that those I spoke to before joining university mentioned so often.
Freshers’ Week, I must caveat, is not normal and far from representative of how university actually is. But those doubts I had prior to joining have gone, and that is what it was all about!
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