The sun is shining, the campus is busy again, lectures have started… Here we go again. Starting my third year, I’ve noticed that there is far less nervous energy around, and much more a sense, and I quote from my lecture this morning, that “it’s good to be back to normal”. A semi-nostalgic sentiment considering that only for the next 9 months will this indeed be ‘the norm’, but before I get too emotional about the fact the finish line is in sight- a bittersweet realisation- or make panicked to do lists of all the things I haven’t got round to yet, let me tell you about my journey back in time this weekend.
It’s Saturday morning, I got out of bed at half past 6 and I’m now wearing so much yellow I feel ever so slightly like a canary! That can only mean one thing: Open Day. Having really enjoyed working as a marshal at the open day in June I signed up again and this time, as well as being blessed with glorious weather, I also got to lead accommodation tours. This is where we heap on the nostalgia, I haven’t been in a halls flat since I vacated campus last summer and to be honest it was a really strange feeling. I also had the semi-embarrassing realisation that I was lost leading my first tour, to the flat I was supposed to be showing, was in a block on the opposite side of campus to where my flat and all those I spent time in were situated. I had to rather humbly consult the map! So well and truly disproving my own first-year assumption that third years know everything! It was like walking back into a whole other period of my life (Gatsby would love it), the layout, the rooms, the particular halls smell. Thank goodness, my old flat wasn’t being shown otherwise I might have held a nostalgia party in the corridor! Once again, I really enjoyed the day, you can’t beat the look of excitement in the prospective student’s eyes and I myself was like a kid at Christmas when I discovered someone I was showing around was interested in my course, also went to my old sixth form and lived in my hometown, which considering we’re over 300 miles away and it’s not the biggest of places was an insane coincidence. Slight over excitement maybe but I had just had my fourth cup of coffee of the day!!! Halls is such a unique time in your uni life and one of the most diverse experiences of which I have many fond memories- ones which were nice to relive if only for 8 hours.
In the meantime, we’ve headed up one last time to fresher’s fayre and added to the annual collection of posters, thankfully, we have a lot of wall space! Collected more vouchers and offers than we’ll ever know what to do with, finally got free harbour lights chips (third time lucky) and bought our tickets for the 80s party.
So, we’re good to go and before they tell me when all my deadlines are…