Week 10: Seemingly Packed

I've been almost non-stop this week. Or, at least, I think I have. Last week's post was written on Monday so I've already revealed what happened that day. I'll start with Tuesday.

On Tuesday, I managed to go over-budget again by buying almost £40 worth of food. To be fair, I hadn't been food shopping in a while so I figured that I'd take that excuse to stock up. I did buy a lot of things I wasn't going to eat straight away, such as tins of chopped tomatoes (essential for student living), tomato soup (also essential) and kidney beans (as before). I was, however, being money conscious. I went round with the calculator on my phone and tried to keep track. It appears I missed one or two things because I was about £3 off but it didn't matter anyway. I had to call a taxi to cart all the stuff back to TC because it was simply too heavy to carry healthily. The taxi driver then alluded to me being a princess simply because of my name (my surname is Royle). Lovely. He got to keep the change.

As I'd promised to meet Oli at the Guild, I had to rush to put all my things away and make 'portable food' so I could avoid the grump monster that attacks me when I get hungry. It was absolutely gorgeous so sitting outside Joe's Bar sipping a glass of water and my 30 second burger (frikadillen in a burger bun/roll with pickle) was a breeze. We then moved down to Student Development in the basement to make posters for our first society event which, later, we had to alter due to circumstances I'll reveal in a bit. At ten to four we headed up to the Thomson Training Suite for the Cultural societies mini-forum.

Mini-forums are organised for societies with similar aims (there's a media mini-forum, a departmental one, an indoor activities one, etc.). The VP SAD (Vice President of Student Activities and Development) chairs the meeting and any issues are put to her (at the moment it is Emma Packham). This time round, the candidates running for Emma's job were there and presented their pitch to us. When the elections come round again, it's really important that everyone votes because the Guild is a democracy and needs the input of the students. It is run for students, after all. After the candidates had their half an hour, they left and Emma introduced the Referendum. This is only relevant to this year, I think, so I won't really say much. I can't even say if I agree or not. If you want to find more about the Referendum, there's more on the Guild website and on Facebook groups. Eventually the focus turned to the groups. We went round the table in turn reporting on the year's successes and difficulties (note: not failures). It was interesting to hear what events people were putting on and to hear that societies which have been running for a long time are still struggling with getting funding due to their small amount of members. The list of societies is, again, on the Guild website under 'Get Involved'.

As I said earlier, we had problems with our first event. We had planned to meet at Joe's Bar at 8.30pm because it's an easily accessible place but when we went down to Joe's to talk to the staff about it, they said they were hosting a Sports Night on the same day so would have to charge our members £4 for entry and would have to shift our time to 9pm. We didn't want to do that so we changed our venue to Bar One, on the Vale, and the manager was happy for us to put some posters up advertising the event. We can't say for sure how the posters have helped or hindered the promotion of the event but we have had a small increase in group members on Facebook. There's also a poster up in the TeCRA office thanks to the enthusiasm of one of the RAs who claims to be a proud Northerner.

Thursday was a bit of a low, blank day for me. I had rehearsals at 10am which meant waking up at 7am (I always leave the flat an hour before I need to be up at the Selly Oak campus and wake up two hours before I need to leave). That wasn't altogether pleasant. I think I need some sort of schedule back in my life. I may well go ahead and make one, considering I have about 7500 words to write over Easter and an exam to prepare for and the gym to go to. After 19th May, though, I'll be a free woman! That's the beauty of University: it's intense but the finishing date is earlier than your previous.

Yesterday was quite refreshing, actually, in that the morning was quite slack. I had to be in Selly Oak for 2pm so I didn't have to set my alarm, which is always good. I amused myself with the Friday Night Comedy podcast on the walk up to George Cadbury Hall which made me about twenty minutes early. That's also always good. The reason I was up there was the cueing exercise that we have to do every four weeks (minus the costume run) of Theatre Crafts. This time round it was sound. We had to go up into the sound box and were taught how to use the cueing programme then, essentially, made sound happen at the right time. Techie times!

A heart shaped slice of leek I found in my salad. How sweet.

Week 3: Starting up a society

At Birmingham, there are over 160 societies so there's usually something for everyone. However, I'm a very picky person. Having spent hours looking at the variety of societies and not deciding on one that I'd like to commit to, I was ready to just concentrate on studying and procrastinating. On Wednesday, though, I was having a conversation about just going through the motions, with my boyfriend, and some words slipped out my mouth: 'let's start a society for Northerners'. Genius. As a representative of 'The North', I'd like to warn anyone else in my group that the University of Birmingham is choc-full of student from the south and abroad. I know there are some Northerners hiding in here somewhere. I found a few of them myself. My boyfriend is one. We need more! That's why we decided to start up a society for us.

We then thought of how exactly we could do that. I insisted that on our way home, because we had the revelation over a mug of hot chocolate in Starbucks on New Street, we visit the Guild reception and ask what they know about setting a society up. It was about 7pm so we didn't expect anywhere to be open but I knew that there would be someone at the reception to help. She told me that the Student Development office deal with the society and volunteering side of the Guild and it would definitely be worth asking them for more details. I'd read or been told somewhere that to start up a society you need to prove that it would be successful so a certain amount of signatures would be needed.

The following day, I went down to Student Development and they were very excited that I wanted to do this. It seems that very few people have the courage or initiative to start up a society of their own so I was praised like a Queen. I was given a form to read and fill in. The very important bit of it was that I needed 20 people to say they liked the idea of the society. I did mention to everyone I asked to sign that this did not mean they would be committing to signing up, they'd just be helping me out. There's also two pages to fill in about justifying the reason for starting the society - you have to reassure the Guild that it would not threaten their financial status or offend in any way. Also, just because the society would be aimed at people from the North of England, it doesn't mean we can cast away anyone who is not from that area. Anyone is welcome as long as they are willing to embrace Northern culture. I am making it very clear, in our advertising, that the society does not promote the North/South divide but celebrates the minority of Northerners in the University.

So far I have six of twenty signatures. That shows how few people of Northern descent there are. Admittedly, I have only approached a handful of joint honours drama students and most of the single honours crew. A group has been set up on Facebook (link below) and advertising material is in the process of production. I plan to stand outside the library at some point either tomorrow or Tuesday and ask randoms for their interest. ...if I can muster the courage. Surely I can, I've performed on stage in front of a full house before. How hard can it be? Gulp.


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