Hi Guys! It’s been a while since my last post. Trust me I have been really busy. Having started my course in the middle of the pandemic, university has always been quiet. Then came Fresher’s 21 and now the uni is jam-packed with people and various events. It almost feels like I have landed on another planet of a sudden. Today, I’m going to share some exciting events we had during fresher’s week or as we call it this year “The Big Welcome”. Fresher’s week occurred during Monday, 20th Sept 2021- Sunday 26th Sept 2021. Its an entire week before your lecture starts that is dedicated to various events, games, parties, introducing university support and services and lots more. It’s almost like an Indian festival to be honest, with the crowd, busy activities, music, and everything.
Let me start with my favourite place- the library. Our library is not a typical boring, “silence please”, study only zone (Of course no one plays music over loudspeakers, and we do have silent study😁). During the welcome week we had variety of activities in the library. Flags from different countries were put up in the library to represent the international population at the uni. Then we had free tea and biscuits during the entire fresher’s week and our friendly library team was always around to explain all the support services we have at the library like the maths and statistics advice, academic development zone, printing and of course borrowing books.
Perfect sign for tea lovers like me. How about you? 
Never knew tea could look so cute
During the welcome week, you will have lots of introductory sessions for your course, academic hive and there are also lots of campus tours for newbies (Yeah! Our campus is huge, better walk around and explore the campus a couple of times during welcome week else you are going to be running around when your lectures start). There was a wide range of activities, starting with the international fair, which was an event exclusively for international students to introduce them to various international student support services we have at the uni.
One of the fun-filled events during fresher’s week was the Colour Run at Surrey Sports Park. It reminded me of Holi. (Don’t believe me? see the pictures for yourself). I’m adding pictures of some of the other events during fresher’s week as well. Did I tell you we also had free food for freshers.
Looks like Holi, doesn’t it?
(Pic Credits: Insta) 😉
Free food. All you have to do is grab a bag.
If you think that’s all of it, then you are so wrong. Keep on reading because I promise, its only going to get better. One of the amazing events were the fresher’s fair. It was organised in our huge Marquee and this was the perfect opportunity to meet the 170+ clubs and societies we have at Surrey. You can simply walk around, chat with various societies and clubs, get to know them, sign up and collect lots and lots of freebies. I was working at 2 stalls. One of them being my part-time work with Student Enterprise and the other one “The Postgraduate Society”. I met so many amazing societies that day, the Archery society, Salsa and Bachatha society, artsoc, zensoc (for meditation), garden society, team surrey and lots more. (Oh, I also joined two new societies by the way).
Fresher’s fair at Marquee 
Our postgraduate society at Fresher’s fair.
That’s our President and Vice-president. 😍
Guess who won?
Meee, I got a team surrey t-shirt 🤩🤩
Archery Society at freshers 
And that’s me having a bit of fun during my work 😉
The Active Freshers
This event was held during the weekend. You can consider it as a weekend for free taster sessions by all the sports and clubs. Some of the clubs have a membership fee, but the active fresher’s weekend provides you an opportunity to try out various activities free of charge. Never tried mountaineering or Ballroom dancing? Well, this is the perfect weekend to give it a go.
Fencing
(Pic credits: Insta)
Ballroom dancing
(Pic credits: Insta)
Rubix – Our own nightclub on campus
As promised the best one was an entire week of party at rubix. Freshers and returning students everyone had a blast with a weeklong party from 11:00pm to 3:00 am. I honestly have no words to describe this, better I drop some pictures here. (PS: some of them are from rubix Instagram page). To wrap it all together we had a fresher’s ball for the first time. And that was the end of fresher’s week.
Paint ball
It’s been almost two weeks since freshers, the campus still has a lot of activities and events going on. All our clubs and societies that stayed dormant during covid has woken up, leaving an array of activities throughout the week to engage in. We have free Monday movie nights, Tuesday quiz and Thursday board game nights. Rubix is lit from Wednesday to Saturday. There are lots of different activities to unwind yourself after a long day. Another major event I would like share with you is the World Mental Health Day. World Mental Health Day was observed on 10th October. As it was a Sunday, we had some events during Friday. The various support services at the Uni came together with these stalls. . Our uni focuses a lot on the mental wellbeing of students, which is really amazing. See the pictures for various support services.
Oh did I tell you, I am now a peer support ambassador as well. 
Nightline
Welfare watch 
Samaritans 
Student minds
I’m pretty sure I have missed a number of activities, and that’s because there is so much going on and it’s kind of hard for one person to keep track of all of it. The best way to know what’s happening around the uni is to follow our Instagram pages, and of course walk around the campus between your lectures. 😁
Until next time — ciao!!
If you have a queries regarding life at Surrey, please do get in touch with us via email: india@surrey.ac.uk
