Demi Smith is an MA English Literature student. She is also on the committee for the Film Viewing Cambridge Society, and won both Union and Society Honours at the 2018 SU Awards. She shares how postgraduate students can get involved during Freshers Week. 

Freshers Week can be a tough time for any student; for first years it’s all brand new, and for second and third years it can be a reminder of how fast uni’s gone by already. For postgraduate students though, it can feel hard to fit in.

I, like a lot of my fellow postgraduate students, had a distinct advantage in having come straight out of my Bachelor’s degree at ARU into my MA, and I was pretty involved in Freshers Week for my three undergrad years, so I asked myself ‘why should it be any different this year?’

Freshers Week as a postgraduate student can be daunting. All the events, the booths at the Fair, the society taster sessions, even the flyers handed out everywhere you go seem to be aimed at first time, first year students, fresh out of sixth form and college and convinced that 10,000 words can’t be that hard to write. As a postgrad, I didn’t feel that I fit that description, so nothing in Freshers Week seemed like it was meant for me when I got there.

Fresher’s Week is for students. Postgrad, undergrad, PhD, part time, full time, distance, or any combination in between, if you’re at the uni then there will be something for you in Freshers Week.

The sheer diversity of everything that goes on means that there will absolutely be something for you. For people interested in helping their community, there’s the Volunteering Service. For those who play a sport there’s Active Anglia. With over 120 societies there’s bound to be one of them that interests you!

In short, Fresher’s Week isn’t just for freshers themselves; it’s a way of welcoming students to the union and to the university, whether they’re returning students or brand new students.