The University Experience

I'm not quite sure whether this is the phenomenon in other universities, but for us at UWS, our cohort in medicine tends to be pretty friendly but also insular and exclusive to our own cohort. This may be due to various factors, such as different starting dates of our course versus other courses in the university; the geographical proximity of the rest of the university from our building; the self-sufficience of our totally awesome building; or simply that we can't really be bothered extending ourselves socially to the rest of the university when we seem to have no reason to (after all, having 400+ potential friends to meet and greet is quite enough). Thinking about how 'student life' is promoted so heavily as a strong point by my friends who attend other universities, I can't help but see that my own personal view of UWS as a university without much 'student life' could simply be due to my own indifferent attitude to involving myself in it, and thus, having no idea as to what could be either offered, or initiated. As a comparatively young university, with a comparatively young student union (after the last one went insolvent...), I see the 'lack' of student life as an opportunity to innovate, to be involved, and to improve this ourselves. The pre-clinical years of our course are hardly contact-hours heavy, so we do have some time to pursue this. Our own UWS Medicine Society is, in my opinion, brilliantly run, with a dedicated Executive and other involved students who are really keen on enriching the extracurricula experience of university; this does not line up with what is happening at the moment. This is why I think that the upcoming student union elections at the end of April will be an important turning point. I've joined a very keen and energetic team of students who call ourselves 'Action!' - an initiative to turn this around. Med students can exert an enormous effect on the university, simply by voting in the elections - getting the most enthusiastic and innovative students into the union, allowing them to change the blase attitude held by those in office now, and to think and act for the benefit of the students.

My friends that attend those other universities joined endless strings of clubs on O-Week. They did not bother to follow this up; and considering their circle of friends are still the same, I struggle to see how they could boast about student life. Taking action and being involved will do far more than sitting on the laurels of those coming before them.