Until you have looked into the face of a woman from Preston, standing at your door, holding a box of vodka jelly and a bum bag full of coins, as she screams into your puffy post-adolescent ears that everyone’s ‘going in’ on a ‘jellocalypse’ tonight before ‘storming it’ to the Union for ‘happy hour’; until you’ve had a anatomically questionable dick and balls scrawled up your arm by a girl from Kent who, minutes later, tries to steal someone’s hat on her way to the smoking area that overlooks 16 Biffa bins and a chip-eating fox; until you’ve phoned your soon-to-be-ex from outside a club that’s playing a nostalgia medley of childhood hits interspersed with squidging, souless house music, to tell them that you love them, while crying over a bin, you’re not quite what we in the UK call ‘fresh’.
Ah Freshers’ Week. Probably the most anachronistic term in all of higher education. Like millions of other women throughout the last four decades, I finished my freshers week feeling about as crisp and spring-like as a triple-boiled bag of shit. The gigs in the student union, the pub crawls, the 17 metre long queues in Argos, the weepingly lonely dinners of pasta and Dolmio stir-in sauces, the stolen jumpers and missed buses, the drunken fumbles with a man who looks like an extra in Wayne’s World, the seven societies you sign up to just to get a free pen and chance to speak to someone new, the late night grip of a new best friend under the light of a fire escape, the reading lists, the endless winding corridors, the hangovers.
Of course with binge drinking amongst young adults still dropping like a cat down a fire escape, Freshers’ Week in the UK is a far less sodden, sloppy affair than it once was. But many of the rituals stay the same - the student halls of residence, the parties, the fancy dress, the friendships forged and condoms picked up for free from the welfare office.
But how does this rite of passage look around the world? Do they eat kebabs in Germany? Are Japanese students expected to share rooms? Do Indian students play drinking games? We thought we’d pull our head out of this kigu and take a look.
'Orientation Week' in America
I know a woman who, during her Orientation Week in the US, tried to drink enough shots to spell ‘Texas Longhorns’ up her arms (you got a new letter for each shot and, once you’d spelled the name of the local football team, would get free access to the keg). Suffice to say, she got to ‘Texas Long’ before vomiting spectacularly and heading home.
To UK students, perhaps the most striking thing about American freshers’ week (or Welcome Week if we’re feeling particularly friendly) is that you might well spend it with someone else in your room. Not someone you’ve invited home over a bottle of Jagermeister either - an actual room mate. Chosen by your university. As my friend Lauren puts it, ‘One of the first decisions made in college is choosing, with this child stranger, how to arrange the beds: (a) both on the floor, or (b) bunked. In addition to sharing rooms, freshmen are also usually sharing hall bathrooms so everyone has their shower flip-flips and a shower caddy—one of those terrible plastic handled buckets with all your bathroom supplies, and you tote your toiletries in around like a vagrant.’ I love this girl. You can see why.
Then there are the games. It would be perhaps most charitable to call American ‘frosher’ games (because that’s what they’ll call them) ‘horseplay’. There will be physical challenges, drinking challenges, streaking, scavanger hunts, sometimes the odd insane ritual like being bag-piped into your presidential convocation like in Washington. But there are also the more dangerous challenges, like being dropped in the middle of nowhere and having to make your way back, being stripped naked, swimming in fountains or actual lakes.
The latter are usually associated with that almost incomprehensible tradition of Greek sororities and fraternities. During the first week, students decide whether and which they want to join various fraternities and sororities, after which there's usually a ‘hazing period’ during which aspiring members humiliate themselves in the name of showing willing, before being considered a full member.
And, finally, to the frat parties. Which, for many, means one thing: red plastic Solo cups out of which you drink all your alcoholic beverages, sometimes all at once. Pity the under 21 year olds who still can’t legally drink, I say.
Fachchas In India
You may think that in a country where alcohol is banned in four states and many people choose not to drink for religious reasons, the booze-soaked traditions familiar to most Europeans wouldn’t be in quite such abundance in India. No so for journalist and author Sanjana Chowhan who responded to my tentative enquiries about her student boozing habits with the full caps reply ‘WE DRANK A LOT’. Sanjana, like many Indian students, lived at home during university. But, she says, this actually was an important part of the experience: 'My college years built a lot of character mainly because of the commute involved,' she explains. 'I took a local train all the way to South Bombay from the suburbs and back everyday. All this while we partied, had good grades, smoked a lot of pot, drank and were pretty participative.'
Many Indian universities still have their fair share of ‘ragging’ - a practice which many see as having its roots in British and American universities. At their worst, these will often involve freshers or ‘fachchas’ getting whipped up into dares, fights, and sexual harassment, but at their best it’s Bollywood dancing, late night singing, and the initiation into various extra-curricular societies. As Sanjana says, 'Our seniors pretended to be professors and made us kneel on the floors and stand on tables, obviously we complied, because they did that good a job of pretending.'
In many Indian cities, but particularly Delhi, housing is now in such short supply that students are often unable to find places in halls of residence of university hostels. According to the Indian Express, in Delhi there is one hostel place for every 30 students, sparking a Right to Accommodation movement. But what may surprise most UK students is that accommodation at Indian universities is almost always single sex. That’s right - no early morning glimpses of the boy in room C4 cooking breakfast in his white Y-fronts.
Tuition Fee Free Germany
I’m about to tell you something that will make you actually, physically, wince: German students don’t have to pay tuition fees. I mean, sure, they have to fill out the sort of forms that would have made Kafka cry, and they do have to pay a certain amount of administrative fees and something called ‘semester contributions’ but nothing like the cost of studying in the UK.
The impression you get from talking to German students is that, on the whole, freshers are far less supervised than in England. Or, to quote my German friend Philip, ‘there is far less hand-holding’. So, while there are pub crawls (I mean, of course there are pub crawls - this is a country where you drink out of something called a stone) and parties, you are far less likely to have someone coming in to check your room. You won’t have a cleaner, you won’t have security staff living in your building, you won’t have a curfew - it’s basically like you’ve moved into your own flat, only you’ve never met any of the people living with you. In fact, many German students choose to spend their time at University living or lodging with people outside of University accommodation, even in first year.
As for kebabs - do German students eat kebabs? You bet your lightly grilled buttocks they do, particularly in Berlin.
Cherry Blossom Parties On Campus In Japan
Japan has more than 770 universities, with more than 2.8 million students and, like Scotland, most degree courses last four years. But while first year students often have the freedom of a small, boxy apartment (although many live with friends or even their parents), there is nowhere near the freedom to get messed up as you’ll find in British university towns.
You see, if you’re arrested for possessing or using drugs in Japan you may well be held in detention, without bail, for up to three months while they investigate, and then be sent to prison for up to 10 years. Which could really, you know, harsh your buzz in a meaningful way.
And, according to my friend Tomomi, most Japanese universities are campus universities, outside of the city. In her words ‘It'd be like if every student in Britain went to Keele.’ Yikes.
But before we get too drawn into our Eurocentric nightmare of suburban, sober studies, it’s not all too serious: 'The first two weeks at school is pretty hectic, but fun', explained my friend Momotaro Takamori who now works at Kyoto University. 'Universities have sport teams or other clubs that a lot of students belong to (chess, cooking, sci-fi novel, etc). During the first half of April, freshmen seek which group or team they want to be a part of. These clubs and teams hold freshmen welcoming parties. By May, kids get to know each other and for a lot of people that pretty much determines a huge part of their social life for the rest of their college years.' There is also the rather lovely-sounding tradition of cherry blossom parties. 'We just go to parks or riversides where we find cherry blossoms and eat, drink, and chat with others,' explains Momotaro. 'And basically every college has their own school festival every year (a lot of colleges have it around October or November), where students set up food stands and hold events like tea ceremonies, comedy and gigs.'
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.