One of the main reasons to go into university accommodation in your first year is because of the fun events that are put on by the hall. Most of them are important during your first few weeks of the first semester because they help you get to know people a lot better and make friends! But now that we are half way through the year, my perspective of hall events has changed. Now they are a nice break from studying, a fun way to hang with your friends and be involved in hall life. There are different types of events. Sometimes they will be accommodation specific, like we will have a BBQ just for the whole of apartments or a board games night where we all come together and have fun. Sometimes they are specific only to your floor, and sometimes they are for all of accommodation. Hall events are fun! Below are a few of the things you could enjoy if you decide to go into university accommodation:)
International day! (floor event)
Every so often every floor has an event organised by their RA. This is an awesome opportunity to meet and get to know other people on your floor, and also have a really good time! One of the first floor events we had was international day. Everyone on our floor came together in one apartment and cooked food that was special to them, their family, or their culture. I decided to cook some Italian food. We also had sushi, stir fry, crepes and more! It was basically just an excuse to eat a ton of amazing food, and along the way we got to know the rest of our floor and have a really good time. Cooking the food was fun, eating it was even more fun, and after we watched one of my RA’s favourite Colombian movies. It was an amazing day, events like this are the reason my floor is so close, we even had people from other floors coming up to join us:)
Football day! (accommodation wide event)
So football day was an accommodation wide competition that brought together all the halls into the rec center. The competition ran all day and teams from Carlaw student village, Grafton Hall, O’Rorke hall and more competed to win! We went along to support (because none of us was at all confident in our soccer abilities), with our bright orange Hounds shirts (Hounds is our mascot) and cheered our team to victory! We had an absolute blast and met so many people from other uni halls, it also gave us a chance to explore the rec center, which was fun:)
Clash of the colours! (hall event)
Clash of the colours is the most recent of the hall events that has happened. During Re O week Uni hall towers and apartments decided to put together an event called clash of the colours. Each floor has a different colour associated with them, and at the end of the year the floor that has the most points wins! You win points in events like this by competing with other floors in fun competitions and games. The competition included escape rooms, weetbix eating competitions, some pretty ridiculous blind folded obstacle courses, and riddle solving. Each floor had a team and so myself an five other members of my floor headed over to compete. We had an absolute blast, and scored some pretty mean points for our floor:) We figured out the code on the locked door of the escape room, ate an amazing amount of weetbix without the use of our hands (who knew teenage boys could eat so much), and completely face planted during the blindfolded obstacle courses (totally not my fault). It was a pretty awesome day, and we enjoyed every minute of it.
So there you have it, those are three of my favourite hall events so far this year. Now that I’ve thought about it, most of my friends I actually met whilst competing in hall events lol. They are so much fun, and definitely an amazing reason to live in first year accommodation! 🏡