It’s been a very long Fresher’s Week, but last night saw one of the most anticipated events of the festivities and there was no sign of exhaustion from students.
For Thursday, Ents teamed up with both the Science Gallery and the combined forces of the Phil and TAF for two events. The Science Gallery played host to a party upstairs, with a chance to see the new SECRET exhibition and enjoy some punch and electronic music in the cool surroundings of one of College’s most impressive buildings.
The maroon army of the Phil and their comrades in arms from Trinity Arts Festival took over the Grand Social, stretching out between the sweaty ground-floor pop pit, the chilled out ever heaving smoking area and the electronic heavy space upstairs, where dropping in for a mild fit of swaying is the most people could muster. As befits a Phil event, the club was packed, but never uncomfortably so. Moving between areas was easy and hassle-free, with helpful signs pointing revelers in the direction of their music of choice.
This was also a night where you were guaranteed to see someone you knew through the cut up Phil t-shirts, glittered visages and flower adorned faces. Even though I’m technically finished college, many times on the night people approached me to talk about TN, my twitter infamy or anything else that was on their mind. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, including the security staff, who were prone to fits of dancing on stage.
The TAF element was also quite evident on the night. While queuing up to enter the club, students were greeted by fire throwers and acrobatics, which added to the grandeur of the whole event.
The night on a whole made this former Fresher feel a deep pang of nostalgia. Looking out over the crowd as they screamed and wailed along with gusto to the closing of Bohemian Rhapsody, one couldn’t shake the sense that for a lot of these young people, nothing did really matter. College is still ahead of them, with an untold amount of opportunities to make friends, join clubs, change their fashion sense, engage in the shift n’ drift, discover burritos. Untold possibilities, and all of them starting from this one long, tiring but ultimately important and worthwhile week. The place you start out from doesn’t determine where you’ll end up, but you’ll always remember it.
