This week thousands of freshers are leaving home to start university, exactly four years after I did the same. Everyone has stories of the horror of freshers’ week hangovers, which could be why few graduates recall the living hell that is the freshers’ fair.
I was awoken on the morning of the fair by my new keen flatmate. She insisted I accompany her to the fair, so dutifully I heaved my limp self up. After a cold shower and a breakfast of black coffee and paracetamol, we trudged along the grey streets towards campus. I knew we were close when the banging of my headache was matched by the heavy bang of bassy music piped through campus by the students’ union to create some artificial fun of the fair. The huge smiles of the SU representatives looked oddly unreal, as if they had been ordered to enjoy themselves.
After entering the marquee where the fair was held, we quickly realised how incredibly hot it was inside. Cramming this many 18-year-olds into one room had made the air thick with perspiration. I could smell the acidic reek of the cheap beer I had drunk the night before sweating its way out of my body.
The stands in the fair were arranged alphabetically, so among the first was the Conservative Society. Unfortunately for them, they were beside Comedy Club; the bow tie-wearing members of the former looked huffy from the stream of mediocre political jokes from the wannabe stand-ups next door.
At ‘D’ was Debating Society. I was looking forward to this one: as a tender teenager I had romanced about the importance of open debate to a free society. I said as much to the glassy-eyed boy giving out leaflets. “Well, open debate within reason”, he replied with an inane grin, “We ensure no-one feels offended”. I politely put the leaflet down.
I got my first taste of the melodrama of student politics at ‘F’: organisers put Friends of Israel and Friends of Palestine societies next to each other. Each society broke out into rival chants, which made most students run away as fast as possible before their eardrums split.
Many societies wouldn’t take no for an answer when I courteously told them I wasn’t interested in hang-gliding or chess. Instead of battling with them, I learnt to smile and say I would love to join them, and then signed up with my flatmate’s name and email. She never learnt how to unsubscribe to these and so got weekly updates from Aikido Society and Heavy Metal Club until she graduated.
At ‘S’ was the students’ union where they handed out condoms and badges saying ‘FREE EDUCATION’. They gave me a leaflet about student strikes: I couldn’t figure out how lying in bed skipping lectures was different to a normal day at university.
I left full of dreams of early mornings at the Athletics Club and late nights at Jazz Society. I’d signed myself up for 34 societies, and my friend from halls to 51. By the end of the year I had attended two: rowing and orchestra, the same hobbies I had before I arrived.
By no means be put off from three years of new hobbies. Just remember, you can sign up to most societies online without enduring the shouty inferno that is the freshers’ fair. And don’t tell any of your flatmates your email address.
