Róisín Kirby
Staff Writer
It is finally here, 2012; Hilary Term; round two of Trinity College Dublin 2011-2012. Millennium pop culture encourages us to see the New Year as a chance for new beginnings, a do-over, one could even go as far as to call it a ‘fresh’ start.
For many of us January will be the month for renewing gym memberships, while others will re-visit pre-Christmas party diets; some may even use 2012 as an opportunity for total re-invention. The glossy magazines your girlfriend reads will refer to this as ‘New Year: New You – The Cosmo January Makeover’. The first year residents of Trinity Hall however will be doing things rather differently by bringing the best element of 2011 forward into 2012. I am of course referring to one week and one week only: Freshers Week.
Why have one week of care-free college craic, when you can have two? In fairness, college timetables could argue that the ‘care-free’ aspect of Freshers is not quite applicable this time around, what with nine‘o’clock Monday mornings back in our lives. But when was an alarm clock ever an exscuse for freshers not to enjoy themselves?
Last year’s Refreshers Week coincided with RAG Week, thus serving as Halls’ perfect fundraiser. One jager-filled fresher fully embraced the spirit of the week by emptying the entire contents of his wallet – age card and bus pass included – into the collection bucket. Following the festivities of Tuesday night’s party in D2, some less than sober students took the RAG party home to Halls and took it upon themselves to wax smooth any unguarded legs they could find. Refreshers 2012 will kick off the first of many of Trinity Hall’s RAG Week endeavours.
The JCR’s innovative ‘Refreshers Week’ – named after the blue and yellow wrapped sweets of course – was kicked off last year by David Whelan and the rest of the Plunkett McCullagh’s JCR committee. This year President David Egan hopes to match, if not beat last year’s event and further establish the week as a highlight in the college calendar.
So what is so good about Refreshers? Well, they are brightly wrapped, chewy and are lemon flavoured with a refreshing fizzy centre. But enough about sweets, you are all supposed resolving to post-holiday diets. Thus far the JCR’s monthly events have proven to be enormous successes, leaving many a non-resident Dubliner wishing they had in fact been born in the country! With Hilary Term here already, this year’s JCR has no intention of letting residents come back quietly. Last year Refreshers Week was an enormous hit with Halls students in providing a party that was worth coming back to college for. The venues, drink deals, get-up and hype were all reminiscent of Freshers Week itself, minus the awkwardness of forgetting everyone’s name after two seconds.
This is exactly the aim of the week, for freshers to celebrate their college experience, instead this time round they are doing so with newfound friends, as opposed to making small (slightly slurred) talk with people they may or may not see again. Just last month I found myself staring down the 128 bus aisle at some poor unsuspecting girl, wondering where on earth I knew her from, until it hit me – the flashback. Eighteen months ago I had shared my unashamed life story with her at the Pav during Freshers week. What a beautiful friendship that could have been. Ah well.
Where Freshers week stood for settling in, making new friends and waking up the morning after the night before with a fuzzy memory; Refreshers stands for celebrating a return to college, having these now solid friends buy you drinks and waking up the morning after with an even fuzzier memory. The ice has been officially broken, so add it to the drink, and toast a return to Dublin and the debauchery of Re-Freshers Week 2012!
