A fresher's reflection on a topsy-turvy first term

How did one of the most formative University experiences pan out in the end?

Alexander Sampson, First Year, English Literature

Hitting the ground as a Fresher this year has had its complications. I arrived on a Friday morning to Wills Hall in Stoke Bishop and was greeted with stony silence in my block. A staggered arrivals week designed to reduce the numbers of people mixing, meant I was the first person to arrive.

That night, with the absence of clubs or any opportunity to go out, all the new freshers roamed aroundStoke Bishop searching for rumours of an event. Streams of small groups, totalling hundreds of people, crossed each other again and again in the dark. Clusters of drunk figures yelled to others, ‘Where’s the motive? Where’s the motive?!’

Most motives were discovered to be disappointingly non-existent. People would tramp up the hill following the elusive call of Liquid DnB and find that the LED lights they were following were actually just security flashlights. As soon as this reality became apparent, a different rumour would appear about something in another hall.

The crowd would then move on again and the evening continued as such. On one night, my group stopped and saw a large company of girls walk up and down the same hill four times in 15 minutes. The night usually ended in an anticlimactic cluster around the HiattBaker bus stop security ineffectively shouting at any groups larger than six.

The daytimes were spent awkwardly in people’s rooms. With few events aside from online ‘Chai and Chat’ sessions, most people slept, ignored the Zoom invites to ‘Harry Potter Watch Parties,’ and waited for the night to commence. Freshers’ Week accordingly came and went and work started in earnest.

Most work is currently online meaning students work in their rooms throughout the day, sitting for hours on end watching lectures and seminars. With the added complications of booking a study space for a period of time, or potentially being rejected from a café given the restrictions on numbers, most people work in their rooms or the occasional accommodation study space.

Many freshers don't know where most of the University libraries or study spaces are let alone stepped inside them

Blackboard, the site used for most of the University’s teaching and assignments, works well, aside from the occasional technological glitch. In-person seminars this year mean face masks and visors; this unfortunate combination impedes any easy face-to-face discussion for students and lecturers alike. First year students nervous to contribute in normal circumstances now have the further difficulty of a misty visor.

Self-isolation and quarantine for individual blocks and flats has also affected academic work. At one point, most of Wills Hall, and probably the rest of Stoke Bishop, was in isolation. Many missed out on practical seminars and in-person discussion lectures, thus impacting their learning for that week. In my experience, the online tasks or substitutes for these missed lectures or practicals are satisfactory but still not comparable to the same content taught, discussed, or shown in person.

The University provided very large food boxes for each individual containing cooking essentials. However, for those of us in catered halls, most of this food was wasted as we have no hobs and are not permitted any form of portable stove.

For my block, the food arrived two days late. On the first night, after several hours of phone calls, someone from the Residential Life Team ordered us seven Domino’s pizzas instead. For the rest of the time, we relied on what we had left and what our friends bought from the supermarket.

Stoke Bishop enjoyed 2 weeks of relative normality before blocks and flats began heading into quarantine. Coming out of those two weeks saw a drastic change in the atmosphere as the complete social flexibility of Freshers’ Week had fizzled out.

The pandemic has also transformed the dining rooms of catered halls, such as Wills and Churchill, into communal wastelands. In Wills, social dining is non-existent as each table has a plastic screen down the middle and every seat is two metres apart. All food is served in plastic boxes for either take-away or eatin options; most students take away and eat in their rooms, the kitchen or the corridor of their blocks since these living areas were not designed for communal eating.

The 10pm curfew has simply meant that pub trips start much earlier

The reality of eating in the dining hall is learning to speak to the person opposite you through the break in the plastic screen in front of you. Everything social about catered halls has been axed, including formals and the JCR rooms like the Billiards Room in Wills and the Library in Churchill. Bizarrely, the staff are very strict about social distancing and hygiene once in the dining hall, yet the queue outside stretches back with neither social distancing nor masks.

For Freshers this year, Lakota, Thekla, various bottomless brunches, and an array of pubs have offered something close to ordinary socialising. The rule of six has added some difficulties as pubs fill their capacity very quickly. It is also sometimes difficult to be inclusive when there is a limit on the number of people who can sit together.

The 10pm curfew has simply meant that socials and pub trips start much earlier, while getting the bus back to Stoke Bishop at 10pm takes much longer as everyone leaves the pub at the same time. Buses have reduced their capacity owing to social distancing, meaning that it is often easier and quicker to just walk across the Downs than wait 20 minutes for the bus in a crowd.

Societies have also offered some aspect of normality. Some of the biggest sports clubs - Hockey, Rugby and Mixed Lacrosse – have functioned with regular training and socials and are popular amongst Freshers as a result. Perhaps a key difference this year has been the visibility of smaller societies that were not easy to find during the SU’s Virtual Fresher’s Fair.

Stalls were placed in a virtual atrium where similar sports or societies were banded together. For example, one stall held Men and Women’s Rugby, Touch Rugby and American Football in one. There was an option to chat online with a stall holder or find out more information about the society by clicking a series of links.

Most of the links given just led to the Society’s SU information page and the chat function was slow. Credit must be given to the SU for maintaining the Freshers’ Fair but the reality was that it was absolutely no substitute for the real thing.

Consequently, most people have not had the chance to meet half as many people as they would in a normal year. This is, perhaps, the pandemic’s greatest impact on the Freshers experience.

If I had one piece of advice to all Freshers, I would encourage them to be as pro-active and persistent in finding things online as possible. It is so easy to miss information, especially given the amount of time we are spending staring at screens, and yet there are so many opportunities available if you search for them, alongside help, advice and support if required.

Epigram / Molly Pipe