#NTUSR14

If you saw my UPSTART! 2014 blog post you'll know that that was a big reason for my lack of existence within the blogosphere; however you may have noticed that that only took up two weeks of my time! Another reason for my absence from this blog is that, 2-ish weeks ago, I went on a residential at the Clifton Campus of Nottingham Trent Uni for three days and it was brilliant! We stayed in halls, tried different sports, did tasters sessions and of course had a party!

Photobooths are a heck of a lot of fun!

Now any of you that know me in real life will know that I'm not particularly good at meeting new people and starting conversation so I was incredibly scared when I turned up by myself and walked into a room full of strangers! I, however, completely surprised myself, as when I was putting my bag down I saw another girl doing the same and went and asked her if she was on her own and we went and sat down at a table with three other girls on it and I ACTUALLY MADE CONVERSATION! HALLELUJAH! GOLD STAR FOR JESS! The other girls turned out to be super nice and we ended up sharing a dorm together! Stopping in dorms was a really good experience as we got to see what they're actually like and get a better idea of what to expect!

After the majority of people had arrived we went outside in the wonderful sunshine and did various ice breaker activities, one of which included making a chair out of balloons and I'm delighted to say that our team won with Derek the chair! Waheyy! We then got into our band-related groups (we were all given a coloured band upon arrival to make things easier!) and had a campus tour which was nice although Clifton campus is having a lot of building work done to make it all shiny and new! Afterwards we had lunch and got our dorms! We had 6 people in our room, including Danetta our student ambassador who was lovely! They were self-catered halls but we only had breakfast in there as the rest of the time we were in the SU having food!

Speaking of food, we had domino's pizza that night and oh my gosh I have never seen so much pizza in my life! There was so much left over that we pretty much took a whole pizza back to our room!

Have you ever seen so much pizza?! (Credit: @NTUOutreach)

However before having pizza we spent the afternoon doing sports activities to get an idea of what was on offer at Trent in terms of sports and societies; there was the choice of either rounders or yoga to begin with (I of course chose yoga which was great!) and then we all got together for an hour of Zumba which took quite a bit of effort and I was hopeless at keeping up with but was brilliant!

After battling through the aforementioned mountain of pizza we went bowling, (I lost spectacularly), and went to the SU on the city campus for a pub quiz and some games which was fun! When we got back to our dorm we were all pretty tired so went straight to bed. Now I wasn't expecting luxury from the bed, and it was actually okay to sleep on, but the pillow...my gosh it felt like someone had stuffed a dead animal into a pillow case (that isn't even exaggeration) so I stayed awake for quite a while trying to figure out how best to put my head on this delightful pillow to make it slightly more comfortable! 

Our little volunteering group!

The next morning after breakfast in our dorm we went down to The Point (the SU on the Clifton campus) and had a seminar on skills and communication which was surprisingly quite fun! We then split based on our coloured band groups and one half did their taster sessions while the rest of us did volunteering! For volunteering the group I was in had to cover a path with wood chippings to basically make it more environmentally friendly as Trent is one of the Greenest Universities in the UK! We split into two groups, and a few of us started at each end of the path while some others wheelbarrowed (word?) the wood chippings onto the path for us to rake. This was actually surprisingly fun, which probably had less to do with the actual activity and more to do with the people because we had quite a laugh!




We then had a short break (drinks and biscuits anyone?) and went to our taster sessions! I'd chosen the English taster session which was a seminar in American Literature where we looked at the Indian poet Sherman Alexie and three of his poems which was incredibly interesting!

Lecture Theatre selfie with Barrie!

After lunch we took a bus to the city campus where we were supposed to have a lecture on volunteering however we were late arriving so it was cut short so we could fit in the two taster sessions we were each attending! The first taster session I went to was criminology which was quite interesting and actually enjoyable! We looked at why a criminal might offend and what we thought the suitable consequences might be. My second taster was law, I won't say much about this other than that it made me realise I did not want to study law! 

We had a bit of spare time while all the groups were arriving back so of course selfies were taken...


We then had a campus tour and the city campus buildings are beautiful! Now during this tour one of my roommates Emily and I took quite a few selfies with the most random of things (everyone needs a selfie with a climbing wall right?) the reason for this being that there was a competition for being the most active on social media and Emily seriously wanted to win (and I mean seriously, there were so many selfies and photos of things over the space of three days!) and sure enough you'll be pleased to hear that one the last day it turned out she had won! We also had a group photo on campus which we were all given a copy of!

Can't beat a bit of treacle sponge and custard!

After getting back to Clifton, we all went back to our dorms to get changed ready for the barbecue that night! My gosh those burgers were so nice! We sat outside in the lovely sunshine just chilling, eating food, and there was treacle sponge with custard (an obvious highlight of the experience)!

We then went back inside, where the tables were filled with bin bags, tin foil and sellotape...
We were then told that we all had to dress up like pirates using these for our 'pirate-bin-bag-basement-party' in the club of the SU which was actually quite hilarious! In the party we had a DJ, a photo-booth which was great, a reaction-tester game thing (yup, that's definitely what it's called) and a basketball game (like the ones you get in an arcade)! It was so much fun and there was a lot of horrific dancing going off which made it even better!

The final day began with a lecture on student support which was again surprisingly fun and useful! We then did a finance quiz where we got into teams and each picked out an envelope with a country on it and played the quiz with a world cup twist! Spookily the team that picked Germany won! After a quick break we again split into two groups, half of us spent half an hour on computers looking at course options and getting the information we needed or writing personal statements with help; and the other half had a lecture from the careers team on how to make decisions for uni and we then switched! The lecture was so unbelievably useful as it explained a lot of how to decide on the best course and things you might want to look into when choosing a uni!

The Epic Yellow Team!

A bit later on we got back into our coloured band groups to do a presentation activity, we were given a topic which we would have to present in a lecture theatre for 3-ish minutes. Our topic was 'the day in a life of a student' which was relatively easy given that we had a student ambassador working with our group so we based it around Sophie's usual days. Myself and Barrie wrote a brilliant poem going through each activity of the day (we were oh so creative) while the others created a miniature Sophie with different sets to project in the lecture theatre and time cards to hold up. After we had finished and everyone had presented, the SAMs decided which group should win best presentation and...we won! (Well we were pretty EPIC)!

We then had to go back to our rooms to get ready for the evening which was a little more formal and pack all of our things away! Then we went down to The Point where our parents all arrived and we had a little buffett (which was very yummy, especially the cakes!) after which we moved into a lecture theatre where we watched the video that had been made of the week and were all presented with our group photo and a certificate for going along! And then it was time to say goodbye to everyone, although seeing as we're all on social media I'm sure some of us will keep in touch!

I honestly had such a fantastic three days and seriously recommend that if you're thinking of applying to Trent next year or even if you're not but you live in Nottingham then you should definitely apply to go! (I'm sure they'll be running it next year!) I was pretty unsure of what to expect when I arrived but it was so much fun and I met some really lovely people! It also helped a lot with knowing how to be more prepared for uni and what to expect when you first arrive which I'm sure will be a massive help when the time comes to start uni next year! Plus it was all FREE! YES FREE! Which is pretty damn incredible seeing as you do so much!
 And if any of you who were there are reading this then thanks for a great three days!

Well if you've read this far then I salute you! That was a heck of a long post!

I hope you enjoyed this slightly different post, I know the last two have been quite life-based but I wanted to blog about them because I think it's good to share you're experiences with the world, which I guess is what blogging is all about really? (getting a bit deep now oo-err) and I also want to remember them and be able to look back at what I've done this year!

I promise my next post will be a little more back to normal!

Do let me know in the comments if any of you have been on any uni residentials or taster sessions! 

I'd love to hear about them!

Or if you haven't just let me know what you've been up to recently!

Until next time, Cheerio! 

xx