With the clocks having gone back on Saturday and the days getting shorter, there comes that sharp reminder that time is flying by. That faintly panicky sensation in the pit of your stomach when you consider what you’ve actually got to show for almost half a term’s worth of work. Because rather than being immediately immersed in intense, academic research, realistically, a lot of the first term goes into building new friendships if you are a fresher, or re-forging old ones if you are a returning ‘re-fresher’.
As one of the most valuable things about going to University is arguably the opportunity to make potentially life-long relationships, this is no bad thing. But whether you create these memories and enjoy this company while discovering anew your shared love of 241 cocktails in Dusk, cheesy music on Ziggy’s top floor, or just a night in with a film, memories at Uni do have the danger of blurring into one fast-forwarded, sensation of having a good time. That’s if you remember them at all. But why limit your memories to a series of short-term, short-lived indistinguishable moments? University is a unique point in your life where there really is so much on offer; we should make an effort to do something different and experience things which will stand out from the rest in forty years’ time.
And it seems York students are actually beginning to do just this. Thanks to a phenomenally thorough promotional campaign, RAG’s first challenge for the year, ‘Climb Mount Kili for Hope for Children’, has received unprecedented interest and sign-ups. So far around eighty lucky students have signed up not just to a charity-fuelled physical challenge to climb the highest mountain in Africa, but they have, effectively, secured for themselves a lasting, meaningful experience to be shared with friends while raising funds and awareness for a good cause.
Hope for Children is a global charity working with poor or orphaned children, and the project specifically targeted by RAG to benefit from this Kili climb will help street children find shelter and education in the Tanzanian town of Moshi. It is a brilliant cause, and with such high popularity this year there are strong hopes that the project will be passed down to future committees in an enduring legacy and support for the project. It may seem trivial with such a commendable cause at the root of the project, to remember the benefits for the students taking on the challenge. But it is so easy to float along in a week by week routine in our campus bubble here at York, that signing up for something out of the ordinary and potentially life-changing like a RAG challenge, does deserve some notice.
Clearly, it’s very far from being a case of ‘Climb Mount Kili with RAG or have a boring, non-descript time at Uni’. No-one said doing the same things, week in, week out, wasn’t fun and if you want to spend the three years at York doing just that then be my guest.
There’s a great quote occasionally circulated on Facebook, usually with reference to a clubbing culture, “You won’t remember that night you had a good sleep”. Perhaps it should be altered to “You won’t remember that night you had another averagely good night with the same people, in the same places, but you will remember that time you fund-raised your ass off in ten months to raise £2650 for a good cause, and then spent two and a half weeks seeing something amazing every day”. Not quite as succinct as catchphrases go, but you get my point. Maybe this year is the year to take control of what you are going to remember in fifty years’ time. Get out there, sign-up to something amazing and find yourself some memories.