Welcome Week '08

The last few weeks have been absolutely manic! I’ve been working so hard on making sure that everything has been ready for FocSoc’s Welcome Week that I’ve come close to being locked in the Guild a couple of times! So much has happened that I have absolutely no idea where to start. Everything seemed to be going OK up until the Tuesday before Welcome Week when I found out that not only did we not have a BBQ booked for Welcome Day on the Saturday but that all our Welcome Week info and sign up forms hadn’t been delivered to the mailing guys to send to the freshers – cue a panic attack from me! Thankfully though, with the help of the Guild’s marketing department we managed to get the stuff to the freshers the day before Welcome Day and had all the info put up on the swanky new website and the committee ordered lots and lots of pizza for the freshers. There have been so many events, including Welcome Day, sports day, buddy day, a quiz, stalls at the Community Fair and Freshers Fairs, as well as all the Freshers Fest events. The FocSoc committee have been absolutely amazing throughout Welcome Week, so I have to say thank you to you guys for all the hard work and effort that you’ve put in and congrats on the amazing events that you’ve held and the success of Welcome Week...you totally topped the last committee’s efforts! You’ve a new website, a new Facebook group, which is pushing 300 members – practically double the old group, a new hockey team, a netball team to be reckoned with, and the amazing taxi share idea complete with rave paint! It’s been stressful at times but I know that without each other there’s no way that we’d have had such a successful Welcome Week, so cheers guys! That’s enough of the sentimental stuff! Now that Welcome Week’s over I’m really looking forward to getting back to geoggers, campaigning for home students and seeing FocSoc netball top the league!

Computer Science Loves Home Students

The Wednesday after the A2B induction day, myself and Jo (FocSoc VP Welfare) went over to Computer Science to the Computer Science induction day for home students. This is something I’ve been working on over the summer, liaising with the Head of Student Development and Support for Computer Science. There were about 10 students there in total, some of whom we recognised from the A2B day, who got to hear my lovely presentation about FocSoc and Welcome Week, which I have to say I didn’t write myself, so thanks for that Lib! Then after a natter and some free tea and biscuits we took them over to the Guild for a tour of the building.

A2B Induction

On the 12th September I was invited to give a talk about FocSoc to the freshers who had applied to the Uni through the Access 2 Birmingham Scheme. The scheme itself is designed to encourage students from the West Midlands area who wouldn’t normally apply for higher education to continue their studies at university, whether there is no history of university education in their family or their school is in an area where the progression to higher education is low. Students are normally offered a lower A-Level or IB points offer in return for shadowing a current student in their chosen course, completing an online skills test and completing an essay with the aid of a university tutor. Being an A2B student myself I was more than happy to go along and talk about the opportunities that are available to home students and to show that living at home doesn’t mean that you’re going to miss out on the so-called ‘university experience’. Jen (President) and Sparky (VP Sport) also came along to give their presentations about the Guild and University of Birmingham Sport...although Sparky needs to brush up on his knowledge of intra-league fixtures! =) I also took a few members of the FocSoc committee along with me – Dave (VP Finance), Jo (Welfare Officer) and Charlotte (VP Entertainment) to help answer any questions that the students had and to hand out the all important FocSoc sign-up forms!

The highlight of the day though came with my first Officer Group Raid! Tom Marley came into all our offices to announce that there was loads of food left over from the A2B lunch and they said that we could have it. So, on the promise of chocolate cake (which I later found out that Marley had made up!) several of us took a trek over to the Arts building to grab some free grub and bring it back to the Guild, without being caught – something which we failed, and which resulted in Jen falling backwards out of the sliding doors whilst carrying a load of food.