Student life: beyond academia - sports teams, volunteering and societies

Student life: beyond academia - sports teams, volunteering and societies


A baffling array of choices greets new university students. In Freshers’ Week alone, you will be plied with cheap alcohol, asked if you row, act, sing or play football, urged to join several political parties and will meet at least a dozen people who seem fun, interesting and different from your mates back home.

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The challenge is, of course, to choose wisely. Once the initial excitement has faded, a lot of first-year students find themselves juggling so many balls that they soon start to feel out of their depth. They can end up lurching from one mini-crisis to the next — an overdue essay, cash-flow problems, a relationship gone pear-shaped, meeting the demands of all those clubs they joined — all the while nagged by a vague fear that there is something vital they have forgotten.

The very nature of student life promises a dizzying sense of freedom, and achieving a sensible balance is something you must learn for yourself.

But you won’t be alone at a modern university that takes the welfare of its students seriously, and tries to put the right structures in place to create a happy, wholesome environment.

“We want to attract students who are not only bright but also well-rounded — willing to play hard as well as work hard,” says Prof Janice Kay, deputy vice-chancellor at the University of Exeter. “But that ideal cannot be imposed from above. Students need to be empowered to see themselves as partners in the learning process, not just as customers.”

With tuition fees due to soar this autumn, it will be more important than ever for students to use their time at university wisely if they want to get a decent degree, keep their finances under control and have the time of their lives. The days when an “organised” student was an oxymoron, at which we could all chuckle, are fast receding.

When graduate unemployment was virtually unknown, students were able to treat university as a time of innocent escapism before life got serious. Now, what you do at university outside your studies, and the subject you are reading, increasingly shapes your future career.

“I wish I had done more student journalism,” said a final-year undergraduate at Warwick University desperately searching for a job. “I was interested in working for the BBC, but that gap in my CV worked against me. I didn’t even get an interview.”

Employers will look at students in the round, not just make a note of their degree. Captaining a sports team, running a society, fundraising for charity or even organising a college ball will all help to enhance a CV.

At Lancaster University, where significant emphasis is placed on getting the work-play balance right, students are encouraged to apply for a special Lancaster Award. It is given to those who have successfully demonstrated an ability to make the necessary connection between their studies and their extracurricular activities.

“We have found that students consistently underestimate how much employers are likely to value the non-academic things they do at university,” says Prof Amanda Chetwynd, pro-vice- chancellor at Lancaster University. “By inviting them to make a written record of the life skills they have acquired through part-time jobs, or volunteering, we are helping them focus on their future careers.” Activities pursued by students who have gained the award include holding responsible positions in student societies and acting as student ambassadors, voluntary work in a homeless shelter and as a “reading buddy” in local primary schools, and summer jobs in a solicitor’s office and for a local authority.

Paid work is not only an income source for cash-strapped students, it’s also a chance to gain entrepreneurial skills – such as event management or setting up a website — rather than just working in a bar.

Striking the right balance is never easy, and, with so many competing demands on students, the importance of time-management skills can hardly be overstated. University is a great time to experiment and those with a flair for business will be able to hit the ground running when they graduate. But even friendships might need to be rationed. The famous advice to an Oxford freshman in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited — “You’ll find you spend half your second year shaking off all the undesirable friends you made in your first” — still holds true today.