Freshers Week For Dummies
Welcome Week, better known as Freshers Week, Week 0, or the best week of university. This is akin to an orientation week, allowing you to meet different people and try out different things while settling into university.
You will hear a lot of differing opinions and advice for Freshers Week. This article will provide the most Southeast Asian parent perspective for you - how to utilise all the free stuff, how to maximise social events, and most importantly, how to overprepare for everything.
Let’s start off with a simple disclaimer:
Welcome Week is like a relationship. You will not die without one, it might be beneficial to have one, but sometimes it brings you more problems than necessary. Most importantly, everyone’s Welcome Week plans would be different, and we can all be happy with our different plans. Look for those activities that interest you, but don’t be afraid to try new things!
Pre-Welcome Week Strategies
If you are reading this article, you are likely to be the type to severely overprepare. If so, you might as well start doing the following:
Welcome Week Timetable
This would be released around a week before Welcome Week. Have a rough skim through all the events and see what might be interesting to you.
WarwickSU Website
Go through the clubs and societies section to see what organisations there are in Warwick - you might find interest in some of them and you can specifically target those.
WhatsApp Group Chats
There are objectively four chats you need to be part of. Once you join one chat, it will slowly become easier to find the others. The four are the following:
National Society Chat Group (e.g. VietSoc, Malaysian Students Association)
Your Degree Chat Group (might not be available for smaller degrees)
Your Accommodation Chat Group
You can find most of their links through their Instagram society pages. The benefit of these links is that they can tell you the events these specific societies and degrees are having, hence it can also be beneficial to find the groups of societies that you are interested in. But more importantly, you will see the discussions of parties and what is considered ‘popular’. This would help you decide which of the Fresher parties you want to go to.
Moving In
As an international student, I can see the appeal of staying with your family as long as possible, to prolong this familial bond before they send you off to study very very hard in the UK. However, it is always more strategic to move in a bit earlier. Ideally, the Friday before Welcome Week (23rd September). I’ll give you three reasons:
You get to hoard the good fridge and cupboard space (Pro tip: avoid the bottom shelves. There is a possibility that people’s items will leak towards your stuff. Try to take the higher spaces).
Tesco tends to be less crowded and stuff will not be sold out just yet. Gives you time to buy what you need and settle in.
One of the easiest ways to be friends with your flatmates is to help them move in. It’s socialising on easy mode. If you were to arrive later, it would also be much harder to integrate into friend groups!
Bring medicine - paracetamol to be specific
There is something known as the Freshers Flu. Don’t give me all that ‘I have a strong immune system’ trash, just bring medicine or you will regret it.
Welcome Week Action
Now that you have taken all those pre-game strategies, there are some courses of action we have to take.
Society Fair
There is one key event in Welcome Week you cannot miss - and that is the Society Fair. The details of the societies fair are not finalised just yet, but it is tentatively a two-day event held in the Sports Hall (What? Where is the sports hall? How would I ever find that? Download the Warwick App which comes with a map!).
There are a few reasons why this is important. I’ll once again give you three:
You get to meet people who run the societies in Warwick, but also have a quick glimpse into all societies in Warwick.
Almost everyone will go to the society fair, so ask people to go with you. A very simple and easy way to make friends.
They give out freebies. Do you really want to disappoint your Southeast Asian background by not taking the free stuff? What would your mom say about that?
Sports Events
There are two categories of clubs in Warwick. One is sports, and the other is societies, which is anything but sports. Usually, joining a sports society is expensive, and the specific calculation of how expensive a sport is is dependent on what sport it is and how many you want to join, details are in this link.
But the great thing about Welcome Week is that you can try out all these sports for free, even those less conventional sports (e.g. trampolining, wall climbing). These are often labelled as ‘taster sessions’, and it is the best chance to just go and try out random stuff!
Society Events
The other side would be society events. I am a personal fan of society events as this is how I met most of my friends in Warwick. You might not get along with them instantly, but after bumping into them a few more times at the same society events, you will end up in a conversation and possibly a meaningful friendship.
These societies do not require any commitment. So go to as many as you want before deciding which ones you want to commit to!
Scream, Sweat, and Smoke
There will be a lot of parties. Some are run by the student union (e.g. Foam Party and Big Freshers Icebreaker), while some are run by our favourite Warwick clubs. There will be an option to buy a welcome week pass to access most of these events.
Realistically, unless you really enjoy parties and have spent the last few years of high school building up an insane amount of social stamina, it is unnecessary to get the pass. Most people would just get tickets for specific events. It is definitely one of the fun ways to meet people, and I would definitely recommend going to some of them if you have friends to go along with you. These are the parties you should be using your WhatsApp group chats to gauge response.
Another important reason to not get tickets is that people tend to throw flat parties. You might just end up skipping your icebreaker because there is a party upstairs in your flat! My best advice for these parties - just go with the flow.
Miscellaneous Stuff
While having fun is important, make sure you take the time out to
Explore campus - find out where your lecture halls and classes are
At least one trip to Tesco! Find out the fastest way there as soon as possible
You do not necessarily have to get all your appliances from Tesco. There will be second hand shops popping up on campus during Welcome Week too!
Pick up your BRP. Don’t know what that is? Read our previous article here!
Post-Welcome Week
I only have one piece of advice for you as you begin your university journey after a whole week of socialisation. You know those people you partied with that week? You probably will never see them again. Most people are not friends with people they met in Welcome Week, and that is absolutely normal. Hence, do not get disappointed if the Benjamin you met in Welcome Week never texts you again.
But the one mistake Warwick students tend to make is after a week of partying with that group of newfound friends, they sign an accommodation contract with them in Week 2 to move in with them next year. The number of stories you hear every year about people trying to leave their accommodation contracts because of these bad spontaneous decisions is countless. Do not be one of them.
Welcome Week is a fling. Enjoy it while it lasts.
