During fresher’s week at Uni, I signed up to assist as a member of the welcome crew to help ease first years into uni life and show them around if they need anything. The training day was quite successful, I was nervous about the aspect of working in Cyncoed campus, somewhere I am not familar with being based at Llandaff. The first week started, I was placed at Cyncoed with a few others, in the main reception as this seemed to be the place where most people were walking through trying to find lecture halls or rooms, or coming to seek advice if they needed it by the main reception desk. The Izone is hidden down a corridor in Cyncoed however it is in the main reception at Llandaff, so some people had to be directed down there and others just wanted a general direction of where their rooms were.
Being new to Cyncoed with just my Ipad as a map, it actually took less time than I thought to get familiar with the blocks and buildings, knowing as well that we were working as a team, we managed to cover all the buildings between us and take people for small tours if they wanted to know more of the campus. The first two days were quite busy with helping out people, although Tuesday afternoon definitely got quieter as time went on, so the freshers fayre taking place on the Wednesday was something to look forward too.
On the Wednesday I also helped out on the Enactus stall, showing first years and others what the society had to offer. The fayre as a whole was successful and the welcome crew assisted with the setting up of the stalls and chairs, and also handing out the bags to freshers. The bags contained flyers and discount coupons and general information for new people in Cardiff, and these bags were being handed out in the hundreds. As an extra shift we were offered to join and complete the bag packing, around 15 different flyers to be put into each bag, this took around seven hours to fill all the bags needed to in the Centro bar in Cyncoed the Saturday before the fayre.
We started with a method of packing by passing the single bag around and everyone adding a flyer or two, I went to the end of the line and I thought packing these back into the boxes would be quite an important part to ensure they were easy to access on the day, so this is mainly what I did for the morning, until we switched up the style of packing and instead created piles of the leaflets which were all put into the bag together, speeding up the process by quite a bit.
Thursday again was a quiet day as most of the people who were starting Uni had started on Monday or Tuesday and knew which rooms to attend now, I spent some time handing out leaflets to promote metfest the following day, and then we were instructed to help up up some decorations around the campus.
The flags were added around most of the buildings where the events of Metfest were going to take place, the Zen bar was a key area, so we worked on using the streamers to create displays throughout. This was quite a fun day as it related more to creativity, although before the shift even begun I found people approaching me asking for rooms as late as this in the week.
Metfest came around and seemed to be a busy and active day, we were just positioned to welcome people to the various areas, I spent my time outside of the management building, where one of the main events seemed to be the cocktail making classes and the circus performers who were teaching students how to do some of the tricks.
Overall the week was a fun and interesting one, it was also the chance to get to know other people throughout the University and other courses, as well as some of the main members of the SU. This also helped me greatly towards my Cardiff Met Award hours of work which I was happy about, especially with it being work within the University.
Tahlia Paige 