Freshers' Fair

Today I managed to cycle all the way without making any mistakes at all! And only dismounting to push the bike when absolutely necessary- at the beginning and end (at the beginning there's just a short stretch on Bishopsgate which isn't worth riding because you'd then have to make a tricky right turn before getting off almost straight away to pass a bit of road that's closed to traffic on foot; at the end there's a couple of right turns on and off Aldwych which are quite tricky, not to mention Aldwych itself), and on a short one way street.
First up today- Freshers' Fair. This is an event held by all universities, so far as I know, usually on two days, and organised by the Students' Union. LSE's is today and tomorrow, from 10 to 5, but going this morning suited my schedule best- and it means I can tick that off now.
Freshers' Fairs are always incredibly crowded. There is generally a one way system in operation for the duration, and this was no exception. Unlike UCL, which has a very long very wide corridor that at other times has benches to sit on, tables to work at and sometimes boards displaying artwork, so has Freshers' Fair running down that on one side, then turning round and running back the other way down the other side, with an optional detour into a large room off the hall that separates the two halves of the corridor, LSE's turns out to be in a series of small rooms on various floors of one building, with bottle necks at every door. It's also not arranged alphanbetically- but I had a map that was in a free Freshers' guide that was being handed out yesterday. One good thing about it being in small rooms though was that if you knew there was nothing in a particular room you could just skip it- at UCL, apart from that one optional room, you had to go round the whole thing.
So what exactly is Freshers' Fair? Basically, it's a collection of stalls run by the various clubs and societies. Each stall will generally put up posters on the wall behind them, and on the front of their table, hand out flyers, talk to those who show an interest in joining (and sometimes those who are clearly trying to shuffle past as quickly as possible, depending on the enthusiasm of those manning it), and often give away relevant freebees- though the best freebees generally come from the companies (such as insurance or banks) who are also generally present at Freshers' Fair, trying to get people to sign up for their services- at UCL, one year a company was giving out packs of playing cards and another time it was woks- though sadly, in both cases I wasn't up early enough to get on down there before they'd all gone. If you want to join a society, you can write down your name, email address and academic department on a list, and the society will then email you to let you know what events are being organised. The Union rules at LSE say that each society must charge at least £1 as a membership fee (at UCL I think it was possible for a society not to charge if they wanted, but most did- fair enough as they use the money to finance their events). You pay at the stall- at UCL there was a different system where you signed up to the mailing list at the stall but received a form to take later to the reception desk at the Union administrative area above the Bloomsbury theatre, where you paid and received a membership card.
I went overboard rather. I had a great long list of what I wanted to join before I even went in- I have learnt from experience that there are two ways to do Freshers' Fair:
1 Go round with no clear plan, visiting stalls that catch your eye and joining if the spiel persuades you. Then realising, either halfway round the one way system, or when you're out again, that you've managed to miss a few societies you rather wanted to join, and depending on how desperate you are to join them, either gird your loins and plunge in again the one or more times necessary to track down all of them (having, of course, to go round the whole thing, slowly due to the dense crowds, each time), or just persuade yourself that actually you're much happier with the ones you were talked into by the more convincing stall holders
2 Work out exactly what you want to see before hand and where it all is, so that you know what order each stall will appear in and can make sure you don't miss any. Try not to get lured into any of the others
I was going for 2, but still managed to join a few I hadn't been planning to, including the Mauritian society- I was headed for the cycling society, but the Mauritian society turned out to be where it should have been, and when I asked one of the girls running it where the cycling society was, she managed to persuade me to join. I never did find the cycling society. The full list stands at
Living Wage Campaign
French Connection (French society)
Dance
People and Planet
Oikos (sustainability)
Mauritian
Anime and Manga
Gaia (Geography society but also do environmental stuff)
Green Party
British Culture
Japan
Film
Maths and Statistics
I also had problems finding the Alternative Entertainments society, otherwise the list would be even longer. And I had a misunderstanding at the Volunteering stall- due to a combination of my phrasing coming out extremely badly, and the girl I was talking to not having English as her first language, she misunderstood what I said- I was trying to say 'So what kinds of thing can one get involved with with this volunteering?' She asked 'Do you want to volunteer now?' which I thought was odd and I wasn't quite sure what she meant, but it was one of those times when nervousness makes you say 'yes' automatically before you've worked out what the question is, and she said 'I'm sorry, we've got enough people now, but you could come back later'. I think she thought I was offering to relieve her on the stall, but by the time I'd worked that out it was too late. But it doesn't matter, I'm sure there'll be something about it on the internet and I'll still be able to get involved. If I've got any time left after all the above...
Realistically, I imagine I won't be very active within most of them. I'll probably try to go to at least one event from each, but I may then have to let some of them drop, or at least only go to one or two more events in the year. I joined the four environmental societies because the email accepting me as a 'sustainability champion' (awfull name) mentioned them as being usefull- but I doubt I'll actually become part of their comittees. I'll have to see what my workload is like before working out how much I can take on.
After Freshers' Fair, I met Ginger in Lincoln's Inn Fields for lunch. She's doing the second year of a law conversion course in Holborn, so Lincolns' Inn Fields is just a couple of minutes walk from both of us. It was nice to see her again- we always have a good laugh (actually we really do almost nothing but laugh- but that doesn't mean we don't manage to talk about important things at the same time). I told her about my conversation with Cat, and she said what she does is to tease Cat every now and then- that gets her smiling. She tells her that every sentence she says starts with 'When I was in Tibet-'- not of course literally true, but with a certain truth of its own. Cat's never actually been to Tibet, but she's liked it for ages, and spent several months in India near the border teaching English, and there were a lot of Tibetan refugees in the area. And she does indeed like to tell us about how they do things. Not that I don't like to hear about it- but Ginger has rather hit the nail on the head there!