Posted on Mon 02 Oct 2023 at 17:06 by
Jimena Alamo And the Freshers’ Week madness begins!
This might be a quick update, just because I have been in and out of the office all week, never spending more than 10 minutes sitting down. In all honesty, it hasn’t been as hectic as we thought it would be. Our FWEMs have been stellar and so have the captains. We just run around and go to all the events because there is so much stuff going on, and we seem to be under the impression that we can go to every single event. There’s over 60 of them and only 6 officers, you do the math...
My highlight so far has definitely been the PG quiz yesterday. Not only did I get to meet a lot of PG students that I usually don’t have much chance to interact with, but I also got to play for one of the teams. Unsurprisingly, my only contribution was during the ‘All About Bath’ section – not because I know a lot about Bath, but because they’ve been here for a total of three days, so I knew more. Not that much more, I must admit. Other good times have been arrivals in the city accommodation with the captains (Bereal below to prove I was there), going to the first arena night and seeing the launch, and food market in chancellor’s green. It’s only Tuesday now, so I'm sure I’ll have lots more to tell you about in the next update.
On a more serious note, I have also been involved in helping our non-housed students find alternatives or, at least, understand what their rights are and what kind of support they can ask for. That topic has been somewhat stressful. The good thing is we somehow managed to get the housing issue in our top 10, even before we knew housing for first years was gonna be an issue. We are asking the university to generate a civil housing strategy that goes beyond first year accommodation and Purpose-Built Student Accommodation (PBSA). I also chaired my first ever board of trustees! I’ll admit I was a bit tired because we went to a freshers’ week captains social the night before, and the fact that I was so nervous did not help, but I think it went very well (ask the other officers if they agree).
Again, there has been more going on, but I can’t remember a life before freshers at this point. I promise a more detailed description of the rest of the week, as well as a more detailed description of what I’ve been up to, in my next blog.
I hope everyone’s ready for the new semester! Please do come say hi at some point! I hope you all successfully avoid freshers’ flu (and hope I do too).
Much love,
Jiji x