Hi, I’m Amy. I’m Laura. And today we are going to talk to you about societies.
Your first question might be, what even are societies? It’s a bit of a weird word. They’re
not really called societies up until University. They are basically just hobbies and clubs,
little extra-curricular activities you might have done up until this point, something you
can carry on with through Uni.
During the Freshers Fair, you can go and sign up to any society you want for a small fee.
You pay at the start of the year and then you can join for the entire year. Or you can
join anytime throughout the year. It depends how much the society has commitment like joined to it.
All societies are run by students and in your second and third year you can become part
of the committee to help run it. They tend to meet weekly, but they also have things
called socials, which is when you all just meet up and do something unrelated to the
society. It could be something like watching a film and eating pizza.
One society I joined when I started University was the wind band, which is called Blow Soc.
And I went on a bar crawl and we had to dress up as wild animals. So I dressed up as a zebra.
And I went to a nightclub as a zebra.
I joined the Book Club and we went on a cinema trip to see Gone Girl because that was a book
that became a film, and that was really fun.
There’s such a huge variety of societies and if you follow this link here, you can
check them out on the Students’ Union page. There’s literally a group for every society
you can think of. There’s like food, LGBT societies, religious societies. They have
one for each country around the world. If you are an international student you can join
and meet people from your country.
Also there’s loads of sport, including more competitive sport and more casual sport. There’s
a Quidditch team. And if you really want to go to a society that for some reason doesn’t
exist, you can start your own just by going to the Students’ Union and saying, ‘Look
I have this many people that really want to colour in together’, then you can just
set up a colouring in society and go for that. So there’s a lot of opportunity as well
to make your own society.
Societies are also a great way to make new friends from all years.
It’s also a great way to make friends outside of your halls and your course, because that
can be a little bit limited sometimes if you're in a small flat. So you can meet people from
all around the Uni.
One thing that you might be worried about is who you’re going to go to these societies
with. You can talk to people on these social networking sites and you might find someone
who wants to go to the same society as you, and you can go and meet them there, and you
might even already have a friend.
If you don’t fancy trawling through the website and looking at the A to Z, then there’s
also the Freshers’ Fair, which is part of the Welcome Festival, which basically is just
a big tent. And there'll be representatives from each society and you can chat to them
and find out how often they meet, how much it costs, loads of things like that. And I
really enjoyed going to the Freshers’ Fair in the first week. It was a lot of fun.
I remember it was in this huge marquee on the sports field. And I don’t know how we
even got there. And the first port of call for us there was straight to the free Dominos’
pizza which they had.
And we looked at practically every single society and I wanted to sign up to about 10.
It wasn't actually that realistic, but I still definitely joined a couple. We bought our
Nottingham hoodies there and things like that. And it was a really, really fun day of Freshers’ week.
If you miss out on the chance to go to the Freshers’ Fair or you see another society
throughout the year that you really want to go to, you can actually join at any time.
A lot of societies will welcome new members at any point in the year. I went to the walking
society - it was called RamSoc, like Rambling Society. And there was new people every single
week on the walks. There was no commitment you could just turn up when you had a free
weekend, so long as you paid. And it was really, really great fun.
Saying that though, my band had like a three strike policy that if we didn’t turn up
three times, or if I went out and they saw pictures of me having a good time on a Wednesday
night when I was meant to have a rehearsal, then I’d get a strike. And then if you had
three, they wouldn’t let you back in. So just check out your society and its commitment
basis before you sign up. Some of our best memories from societies was that we both joined
the English Society, because we both do English. And we went on a bar crawl and we saw a lot
of new faces, and then we knew a lot of people in our lectures the next few days. And societies
are a great way to blow off steam after doing your course all day. If you want something
different, like I went to dancing, and it's completely different to sitting at my desk
and reading all day.
Yes.
It’s just a great way to let go of the stress throughout the day, and have a good time.
Societies are in no way compulsory, but I think it's a great way to just enrich your
university experience in your first year and meet loads of new people.
So don’t forget to get involved and go to the Freshers’ Fair during the Welcome Festival week.
And we hope you have a great first week and great first year at Nottingham.
Bye.
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