Lectures & Seminars: Thirsty Work

Drink

When I went to lectures and seminars, there’s one thing I missed out on doing that I really wish I’d done now:

Taken a bottle of water.

That’s it. Nothing else.

One or two people in my classes would always have a bottle of water with them. Sometimes they would leave it next to them and not take one sip. Other times they might have glugged away the entire contents within 45 minutes. Either way, they always took the water with them.

It might not sound like much, but having a drink next to you means you have one less thing to care about when you’re meant to be busy working or listening to complex academic arguments. There were times when I’d be thirsty and I’d look over to another person’s bottle of water and try to use my mind to make it walk over to me and let me take a sip. Like an idiot, I only started taking water to seminars in my final year. And even then it was sporadically, when I remembered.

And that bottle of water could have even saved me money…

You see, if you feel thirsty, then it’s already too late. So when I was feeling thirsty it just made things worse and I couldn’t do anything about it, because I was busy taking notes, or discussing aesthetic values in everyday objects, or letting my mind wander to thoughts of a cold, refreshing drink…mmm, drink!

So the very moment I left the room, I would make a beeline for the student shop or the refectory or the student union. Anywhere that I could buy a drink from. And it wasn’t just me. Seems like a lot of students miss this trick. That’s why I thought it was worthy of writing an entire post about it.

If you’re not keen on filling up a bottle with tap water each time you have a lecture/seminar, why not:

– buy a water filter jug? They fit in the fridge, so the water would be freshly filtered and cold. It would be very affordable if you shared the purchase with all your housemates at the beginning of the year. MUCH cheaper than buying drinks as and when you get thirsty (which will probably be quite often if I’m anything to go by). Or ask for a filter jug as a Christmas prezzie.

– buy a cheap bottle of squash to add a bit of flavour to what you’re drinking? But do remember if it’s apple flavoured squash, or very weak orange squash, you might get people asking you why you’re carrying a urine sample around with you…

I used to think the few people who carried around a bottle of water were:

  • Naturally thirstier people than the rest of us;
  • rebels deep down, trying to tempt the tutors into moaning that they shouldn’t drink in lectures;
  • evil spirits, who put their water on show just to make me feel even more thirsty;
  • trying to look cool, using their water as a prop to show how comfortable they were with their being.

This is probably one thing that I’ve thought way too much about. Maybe I’ll only rest if I find out that tutors really did hate people drinking in their classes.

The element of life

EduLinks – Random Links of Note

Telegraph – A student’s guide to the first year [If you want to know what to expect at university, ask the people who have done it. The students.]

Wikipedia – Unusual articles [Worth a look. Some strange, amusing, eye-opening entries. Makes for good chat topics sometimes too…handy for long, drawn out conversations that go on until the early hours of the morning…all you current students know exactly what I’m talking about.]

BBC News – Students positive about courses [Results from the National Student Survey. Good news…uni’s great! – UPDATE! The headline has suddenly changed to STUDENTS BEMOAN LACK OF FEEDBACK.  So uni’s still great, but better methods are needed to keep students happy with their studies.  Watch this space for any further headline changes…!]

Guardian – Can you believe everything you are told when it comes to your health? [I bet you believed at least one of the so-called ‘facts’ that are busted in this article. I certainly did.]

Best Life – 8 foods you should eat every day [After reading the article above, do we believe this one or not? There’s never a simple answer, is there?]

Internet Resources Newsletter [Each month this comes out, I would recommend you have at least a quick look at the sites they suggest. For years, I’ve been regularly finding new links of use thanks to the newsletter.]

Students’ Union – Interview with a Societies Officer

In the latest part of the Students’ Union feature, I wanted to find out more about what constitutes a big part of a first year student’s introduction to university life: Fresher’s Fayre and all those clubs and societies.

The University of Nottingham is home to one of the largest Freshers events, the biggest RAG proceedings in the UK and some top-class clubs and societies. For example, the student radio station, URN, has won more Student Radio Awards than any other, including a win in 2006 for Station of the Year.

The Students’ Union at Nottingham plays a huge part in the success of all this. It’s what a university SU is all about. So what’s the deal? How do societies and events come to fruition? Best speak to someone who really knows. To find out more, I spoke to Nottingham’s Societies Officer, Matt Leventhall:

Matt Leventhall

– With 174 societies to choose from at Nottingham, there must be a massive push in Fresher’s Week to join clubs and societies. Do you have any tips to Freshers before they simply end up joining everything, panic a bit, then end up participating in nothing?

“At our Students’ Union we have a document called The Guide, which is basically the student’s bible. It’s got everything about the Students’ Union in it, including the societies listing. Every first year gets The Guide delivered to their room upon arrival. So my advice to them would be to have a look at the societies listing in The Guide and pin-point the societies you might wish to join. You don’t want to spend a ridiculous amount of money joining everything. It’s normally about £2-3 to join each society at Fresher’s Fayre. But at the same time, don’t be too closed, because there are so many societies that students probably won’t expect to be there, so have an open mind when going to Fresher’s Fayre. Take a look, join what interests you and get involved!”

– Say a new student spots a gap and wants to begin something new themselves. What’s involved (and how simple is it) in starting a new society?

“For students, it’s easy to get the ball rolling. All a student needs to do is to come and visit us and request a ‘starting a society’ pack. They need 25 people who are interested to sign a petition. They can get a pack via e-mail too, although it’s always great if they can come to see us face to face so we can have a chat and make sure they can get all the help they need.

“The pack contains some template constitutions, to get the students started. Once they have completed the information for their own society, it comes back to the Students’ Union. For the Students’ Union itself, things get a bit more difficult. The new group proposals go to the Societies Executive committee. This is so they can check through everything and make sure the society would be fully inclusive, totally democratic, not overlapping with any current societies and so on. This is quite a detailed process, which needs to be carefully thought over and agreed.

“Another thing to note is a scheme we have called STARS, which stands for Student Training and Activities Reward Scheme. It was formed because we wanted to guarantee that all clubs and societies provide at least a minimum service to their members and also that we wanted to award the amount of work that was being put in by students to make these things happen. The scheme has three levels, bronze, silver and gold. The bronze level recognises things such as full inclusion and being open to anyone with a disability, and is compulsory. The silver and gold levels are for when further elements of training and development take place to elevate standards and abilities within the societies.”

– It sounds like you’ve got a lot of running around to do to make all this work.

“I’m very busy looking at all these things and chairing committees, but I see my workload as strategic rather than operational. I look at the issues and problems to do with societies and how they can be resolved effectively.”

– Are there limits to the number of members in a society or club?

“That’s not something I’ve ever heard of, no. If any society gains a very large number of members, we would look to expand it and think about how much money was being put into the running of it. It’s all abount making the societies bigger, better, and more successful.”

– On your blog, you mention a proposition to create a Chair of Societies Council. What is this?

“When I first came into the position of Societies Officer, I identified a problem. Of the societies that were gaining affiliation, it generally happened because they had better or more confident public speakers. For example, if someone speaking was very shy, or if someone struggled with the speech because English wasn’t their first language, they would be far less likely to achieve affiliation.

“This was clearly not a democratic process.

“The unfair process needed to change so that a totally impartial person could read out speeches for all parties, for and against. In doing this, we achieve a more democratic result. This is what the Chair of Societies Council would focus on.”

– Are there any issues surrounding Students’ Unions that need to be looked into more deeply?

“One of the big issues this year for our Students’ Union is to address communication. We want to make it clear to all students of what the SU can do for them. Many students think that the SU is responsible for little more than arranging big parties and events [Martin’s Note: I THINK THIS IS THE CASE FOR MANY SUs AROUND THE UK]. What we need to do is make a bigger impact on students. For instance, we found that in previous years the SU logo wasn’t on everything that we did. We’re changing that now. We’ll be making a much bigger show right from Day 1 so that students are fully aware of what the SU does and how it can help represent students throughout their time at uni. It’s not yet publicised enough that the Students’ Union can actively help represent students on specific student matters.”

And there you have it. While every Union is going to differ slightly in the way they handle things, you get the general idea of the kind of processes involved. There’s a lot more going on than you might at first imagine.

If you are specifically interested in the Nottingham Students’ Union, these links will provide you with more information:

University of Nottingham Students’ Union Homepage

Students’ Union Executive: Personal Blogs [All blogs are together, but a box at the top allows you to choose one particular officer’s blog if you wish]

EduLinks – Random Links of Note

Today, I’ll list 5 useful resource sites that you might find yourself returning to quite a bit.  I certainly do.

The Student Room – Universities Forums [If you’ve not been to The Student Room, it’s certainly worth a look.  Lots of conversation, help and strange stories from past, present and future students.]

MoneySavingExpert Forums [The money issue is never going to go away for most students.  You can stay one step ahead with all the news and info here.  They even have a Student Money Saving board.]

The Custard.TV [If you can’t be bothered to trawl through the Radio Times listings, this site is useful.  The site tells you what new series are starting each day, and also lists what special one-off programmes are going to be shown.  A great idea.]

Popurls [All the latest web buzz…the page lists links from all the most popular sites, so you don’t have to check everything out yourself.  A daily must if you’re into virals, YouTube, popular net links, etc.]

NationMaster [Great for research, great for study, great for random facts.  The NationMaster website says it all: “…a massive central data source and a handy way to graphically compare nations. NationMaster is a vast compilation of data from such sources as the CIA World Factbook, UN, and OECD…We want to be the web’s one-stop resource for country statistics on everything from soldiers to wall plug voltages.”]