Welcome week

 Welcome Week is over! I hope all freshers have had a good first week in Bangor. I must say that with increasing student numbers, it is increasingly hard to organise something good for them. At least we do are best! And it is a team effort. I have support in the things I am supposed to do from one of our marketing people, Laura. It is really nice to have someone who can help! Especially if you have to be on fieldwork the week before everything happens.

And then there are the Head Peer Guides. And then, of course, the peer guides. They all have different tasks but they are all crucial.

When the actual Welcome Week approaches, it is less work for me and more work for the Head Peer guides. And they were great! They were a good team, but I know they were really tired by the end. I was really tired to, but in my case that was more because I had to quickly get everything ready for a term straight after a fieldwork, and not because welcome week itself is so tiring for me. But it is for them. I am very grateful to them.

So which of the activities did I actually attend? I did three of them: meeting my tutees, drinking coffee with the mature students, and the beach trip.

It was good to meet my tutees! As I did not know what the weather would be I had agreed to meet them in a seminar room. But the weather was good, so we went outside, and ended up on a terrace, having a drink. I enjoyed that! They are quite a varied group but I hope they will turn into small group of friends.

I also attended the mature student welcome. Only three mature students showed up! That is a bit of a disappointment but I think these three had a good time.

At the end of the mature student coffee break, it so happened that the cornet of one of the Head Peer Guides ended up in the hands of my colleague Tom.

The beach trip was attended by about half the students. We were lucky with the weather! And they did the usual sand sculpture competition. That looked like a lot of fun. After that the energy went a bit out of the event, but we are all the sunny beach, and there was enough to enjoy.

sand sculpture competition. Pic by SOS

proud sculptors. Pic by SOS

View from higher up

Now there will be a short period where we will do a debrief with the head peer guides, and then one with the college, and then it will be over. I hope that next year will be easier with respect to covid restrictions, but I could imagine it will be extra difficult otherwise as the University is hoping we will have 20% more freshers then! We'll see…