Dunnes is all out of duvet covers, thousands of Dr Martens are being broken in at once, and you have joined five societies just because they smiled and gave you a party-size bag of Haribo. That means only one thing – it’s Trinity Freshers Week. Seeing incoming first years excitedly re-enacting the bit in Normal People where Connell walks through Front Gate for the first time is, quite frankly, lovely. However, any jaded sophister could tell you that along with the excitement of starting college often comes a spell of ‘freshers fear’ – the feeling of worry, loneliness, and panic resulting from a week that claims to set the foundation for the academic year, if not your entire college career. Fear not – I can confirm that however much this feeling is common and understandable, it is also irrational. Freshers Week, in most people’s experience, is completely overhyped.
“just because Freshers Week might mean meeting a future best friend who somewhere down the line will be your maid of honour, it also probably won’t”
Events that take place during Freshers Week very well could create a good environment for making lasting friends. However, Trying to cover the whole range of film screenings, nights out and competitions put on by TCDSU’s Trinity Ents team and the more than 120 societies would leave barely enough time to shower and sleep. With societies for everything from singing to socialism, the Freshers Week timetable encompasses all areas; there’s bound to be at least one event that brings you together with likeminded people. That said, just because Freshers Week might mean meeting a future best friend who somewhere down the line will be your maid of honour, it also probably won’t. The high expectations of the events are hard to live up to, and regardless of how many times you have the same conversation with strangers – ‘I’m Lara, yeah! What do you study?’ – that first week will probably look very different to the opening scenes of Pitch Perfect.
“Building meaningful friendships takes time, and the stereotype that Freshers Week acts as social cement for the rest of the year is not only inaccurate but anxiety-inducing”
The number of people you will come across during Freshers Week and the limited time you spend with them (perhaps you only exchange a few words while they agree to take a picture of you next to the campanile) means that you likely won’t immediately form a lifelong bond. Building meaningful friendships takes time, and the stereotype that Freshers Week acts as social cement for the rest of the year is not only inaccurate but anxiety-inducing. Despite the reputation of Freshers Week, it is completely normal to reach Sunday and still share only one thing in common with your classmates – the nerves of a brand new academic experience. The fact that the week is referred to as ‘orientation’ in the college calendar seems quite misleading in hindsight, given that for many it is remembered as incredibly disorientating.
The idea of that first week of college being an introduction to life in Trinity is complicated by the Freshers drinking culture. Allow me to assure you that whether or not you drink, endless games of Never Have I Ever and vomiting in the club toilets are not necessarily the foundational bonding experience they seem. There can be a certain frailty in friendships made at the bar, so while going out out in your first week can be really fun, it can also be really overrated. A Senior Sophister student recalled of their first experience of Freshers Week that it “worryingly began a spurt of me using alcohol to socialise with others – I remember one night buying vodka and drinking it alone for courage… I went down a little tipsy and made friends”. The high expectations of Freshers Week as an alcohol-fuelled speed-friending event make this a common college experience. Having a drink to let your hair down during such a massive adjustment period is no bad thing – in my experience, it is about finding the line between drinking for fun, and drinking because you feel insecure, anxious or under pressure.
“It actually doesn’t matter how Freshers week goes in the long run – people will get the real measure of you and vice versa over time”
This need to socially perform right off the bat is overstated; most people find their close college friends, favourite societies, and their way around campus months, or even further into their college life. This might sound lonely initially, but really it is liberating. It actually doesn’t matter how Freshers Week goes in the long run – people will get the real measure of you and vice versa over time. I can happily confirm that I was not put into social exile because of the outfits I wore in my first week, nay, my first year, even though they were for the most part, extremely questionable.
Many of the undergraduates on campus are part of the Covid-cohort that didn’t have a Freshers Week, and if you ask any of them, I’m sure they would tell you that the feeling of FOMO wasn’t necessarily because Freshers Week was bound to be a wholly brilliant week, but more because it is a milestone experience, for better or worse. If you are a first year, keeping this in mind is crucial to approaching the week; the massive adjustment that is starting college is bound to elicit the full range of emotions, both happy and sad, and this will probably be reflected in the first week or so.
If you are a first-year, the best way to combat your own high expectations of Freshers is to accept it for what it is and enjoy its novelty. Lean into the tradition of students clinging to so-called “friends” they met half an hour ago like lifebuoys in the Freshers Fair sea of societies. One day you will treasure the memory. Perhaps the only way that Freshers Week will reflect the rest of your college experience is in its unpredictability and variety of feelings. So this week, and for however many years you have left at Trinity, enjoy the ups, expect some downs, and try to have as much fun as you can along the way.
