It's welcome week at Imperial, which means one thing - loads of stalls scattered around campus. On Tuesday and Wednesday, thousands of students will have passed through, checking out all the society displays and signing up to countless group chats, before deciding they'll only go to one society in the end, they don't have time for more. Okay, I'm being facetious here, but that's what most of my friends did.
I'd attended welcome week last year as a naive fresher, so didn't feel a need to return this time round. I came along anyway, if only to see my friends once again, as well as to snoop around, maybe get some free stuff. Okay, I didn't stand in line for a free slice from Domino's, but that's because I wasn't in much of a mood for pizza. However, I did head over to various stalls, such as sci-fi and fantasy, photography, and even wireless. The latter is a new society, and from the enthusiasm of the stallholder, I feel like I've got to come along at some point. Who knows, maybe it's time for me to get into ham radio. I even found the Imperial Radio Society - the guys who run the uni's radio station - and who knows, maybe I'll try and get an AO2a show. Still undecided on whether I'll play post-punk or electronic, though.
More importantly, though, I was to help out at one of the stalls on Wednesday. You see, I'm a committee member in two societies, and one of them had a stall that day. They needed a volunteer to help run the stall, so I offered myself up. Luckily for me, I got to volunteer alongside one of my friends, meaning I'd spend two hours having lots of fun without the need for awkward introductory small talk.
Manning the stall was pretty straightforward - you'd wait for nervous freshers to come up, then you'd tell them about the society and all the upcoming events. In this case, that meant I mentioned all the stuff we'd be doing in the chemistry society over the next month. Some people who came over to us didn't even study chemistry, they were simply enamoured by our displays, and there was good reason for that.
We set up a challenge for people to construct a certain amino acid out of a modelling kit - those who did so within a certain time frame would win a tote bag, and the speediest could maybe win an additional bonus prize. These consisted of things we'd found in the storage cabinet, not even realising the chemistry society had so much unique merch. For instance, there were teddy bears and notebooks, which we kept as props on the stall.
I'd like to say the whole experience went swimmingly. I started my shift at 2pm and ended two hours later, and in that time, loads of people were still coming up to us and having a go at the challenge. Most people opted for the simpler alanine compared to the clunky histidine, and by the end we were even prompting people to choose alanine. The reason was simple: the prize for solving either was the same, so it was wise to be efficient. Some people struggled, mainly those who didn't study chemistry, but there was no shame in that, obviously.
At the end, all that was left to be done was pack away, which was pretty easy as well. As we were doing so, I noticed someone had vandalised our ChemSoc display, with the tragic inclusion of a chemical engineering sticker across the "E" of ChemSoc. The audacity.
All in all, it was enjoyable, and I am glad to have helped my society out. Compared to what the rest of the year will probably be like, I'm imagining this is as easy as things will get. Not that that's a bad thing, of course, I'm always up for a challenge. Not sure if this time, I'd win a tote bag for it.
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