You’ve arrived at your dorms, you’ve settled down and now it’s time to begin the most relaxed and exciting week of your student life, fresher’s week.

Your student card will get you discounts in many shops. The best place to start fresher’s week is the societies’ fair, where all the different societies are gathered up and are ready to offer information, advice and free stuff (pencils, pens, notepads, condoms…..). There’s everything you can imagine, from archery, volleyball, tennis, climbing and golf to dance, art, theatre, music and skydiving. Now is the time to start doing everything you wanted all these years but never got around to because they were either too far or too expensive.

At this fair you can also find the ethnic societies; Chinese, Greek, Spanish and so on that often organize parties and events at clubs and offer cheaper entrances and free drinks for its members. They also organize ethnic cuisine nights with great food from all around the world. Most societies organize bar crawls during fresher’s week, which is a great way to meet new people and socialize. This is the way to become known around as a cool and active student who will later get invited to all the parties rather that the one who just stays in his room playing online poker all night. Be sure to attend the infamous circle line bar crawl where students basically just hop on the tube and visit one pub from each stop (you can imagine what you’ll be like after nine/ten stops).

A few days into the week and a few hangovers later you realize that your lectures are about to start and you have absolutely no idea what is going on. Hurry! You must get yourself organized. Be sure to use this time to get your library card and your student card as you will need those soon. You must also pick up your timetable and the list of books you need to purchase. Do not forget to register with the University health centre. With your student card you will get discounts at ‘Waterstones’ where you can buy your books and stationary from. Have a quick look through them and familiarize yourself with the syllabus so that you can organize your study time efficiently. If you haven’t already bought a laptop now is a good time to get one as there are great bargains around this time of year and when you do so make sure you have internet access as it’ll come in handy at 3.00am when you’re still working on an assignment which is due in the morning and need to find information. Of course, when all this is done, there’s always time for one more pub crawl….

Katerina 28/09/09