Belong at Brighton is a six-week programme mostly for 1st year students at the University of Brighton. It introduces the students into the academic practices but also it gives an opportunity to the students to make new friends and build a community.

This blog was written by Sophie Cummins, 1st year student BA (Hons) Linguistics

The week before lessons begin – induction week, typically long, arduous where people are introduced and lessons outlined before the main events. Where everyone is nervous, testing the waters for future partners, friends or people you claim to like but secretly avoid because they eat with their mouth open… eww, just no. I suppose it makes sense then why our Course Leader decided that day to do a group bonding exercise! we’d all get into a group of five, pick a linguistic subject among those written on the board, and go around the university campus doing simple tasks:

  1. Take a picture with a seagull
  2. Find three books around your linguistic subject
  3. Take a picture of the sports centre, train station and student office
  4. Take a selfie inside the booths of the Checkland Building foyer

Just to name a few.

I was already sitting around a table with four other people so, naturally, we all decided to be a team, joking about who was going to take one for the team and tackle a seagull. Then came picking the subject and here’s where the fun began: we all realised at the same moment that everyone in our team was competitive and we were in it to win it (we later learnt that there were no prizes for winning but hey ho). So every subject that came up we instantly wanted it and ‘battled’ it out in rock paper scissors with the other teams. Eventually we win! Language and Ethnicity was the topic!. The second we’re allowed to leave we do, already planning the fastest route. The booths were downstairs so we went there first taking a funny selfie with everyone doing either weird faces or wacky poses – or…. both. Then off to the library where we found the other groups, sitting at the computers, looking for their books. You know, sensibly like what a respectable adult would do in a quiet library.

But… We were not respectable adults.

We ran around, through and up and down that library looking for the books giggling like school children (or goblins depending on how hungover you were), crying out victoriously when we found them and then running out for the next task. That pretty much sets the scene for the rest of the tasks. In each of the photographs, we all had funny faces, arms around each other laughing. We all decided, after failing to picture a single seagull, to argue semantic ambiguity and took a picture of the large seagull design on the glass windows. I told the others in the group about the old, makeshift building which we had to take a photo of (the former site of it anyway since it has now been removed) and how our Subject Lead and tutor Chrystie’s favourite teaching experience happened there and we had a good laugh. A student had come into class, vomited out the window which could not properly open, went home and then returned with a different top on as if nothing had happened. Eventually we returned to class and won the competition, the name ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’ proudly on the board.

No lessons were learnt that day. No vocabulary nor semantics discussed but as we left that classroom still laughing we all found a shared passion in cognitive linguistics – myself being from a small town enthusiastically chatted about cognitive linguistics but also our hopes and dreams, our plans for the future. We may not have learnt anything yet about all the subjects we will learn about in the next three years, but personally I learnt that an old cliché is true – the true treasure are the friends you make along the way.