Freshers Week

Trinity College Dublin must have one of the latest start dates of any university, given that it is only now that students are once again gracing the fantastically Neoclassical halls. One unforseen side effect of this academic influx is the strange and magical (and sometimes frightening) period of time known as: Freshers Week.

A Fresher, as you might have guessed, is a first year student, or for you less PC people, a freshman. They are invited back to campus a week before the rest of the students, so that they can be properly orientated, introduced, and intoxicated before being thrown into the arena of death. I mean, the Student Societies and Organizations Fair.

Every afternoon for the past week, the front courtyard of the campus, known as Parliament Square, has been innundated with people setting up and then manning booths offering a bevy of delights from philosphy to rifle shooting to surfing. I can only hope that the surfing club has rather a large budget for wetsuits, because I have been in the Irish sea, and as far as I can tell, the only reason it isn't the Irish Glacier is because there is a whole lot of salt in it.

In any case, there is something intoxicating about the Fair, although this effect could be put down the presence of a vast multitude of freshers, who seem to release alcohol from their very pores. Perhaps it was this airborne drunkenness that overcame me yesterday, because I found myself stumbling into the midst of the booths and stands, in all likelihood looking like a seriously overdressed fresher. It was at this most vulnerable moment that a young man in a painfully bright green shirt attempted to enlist me in the Fencing Club. After this, the memories are a bit fuzzy. Buffeted down the gauntlet of club members advertising and recruiting at the top of their lungs, I can only recall a blur of papers and signs and words I have never seen before (I assume they were in Irish), but I think I might have accidentally joined the Japanese Students Society somewhere along the way. I can't imagine how this would have happened, given my distinctly non-Japanese heritage, but then again, I think there was something in the air...

I emerged on the far side of the Fair looking disheveled and grasping a pile of flyers, a clear cue for the enterprising banker from Bank of Ireland lurking at the gate to pounce on me. After assuring him in the most forceful tone I could muster after my recent drugging that I was not, in fact, a student, I escaped Parliament Square and headed, resolutely, for the hills.