Freshers | Student Christian Movement

SCM's top tips for freshers

4 Sep 2024

You've seen the usual tips for freshers - take a doorstop for when you're wanting to chat with your flatmates, get out of your comfort zone and try an unusual society, actually attend (at least some) lectures - but here are some things you might not have considered when starting your uni life!...

How To Make Your Uni Room Inspire Thought, Reflection and Comfort

28 Sep 2023

Many of you will just have moved, or be about to move into, your university accommodation. Whether you’re returning to a bedroom you have stayed in before, or moving into a completely new one, it is important that this space is somewhere you can be reflective and comfortable to continue working...

Community & Belonging

5 Aug 2021

It’s a long time since I was managing a university’s clearing hotline – last century, in fact! Yet I still remember clearly the feeling of the jolt of adrenalin as we switched the phone system on and calls began to arrive on results day. Today is a day of rollercoaster emotions – joy,...

If Not For That: A Freshers' Reflection

1 Oct 2019

I wish I could do Freshers differently. I would have made more of an effort to find out who my flatmates were beforehand, so I wasn’t ‘the unknown quantity’ in the flat (my words not theirs - they were all very friendly). I wish I’d been a bit bolder about going out and meeting people. I wouldn’...

Rach's Diary: Round Four of Freshers

26 Sep 2019

It’s freshers' season.

Welcome Week lasts four weeks for me and takes me to six different university campuses. It’s a great opportunity to work with chaplains (it’s amazing what conversations you get into while trying to make the perfect pancake!) meet with church leaders (including...

The Fear of Missing Out

7 Dec 2017

The ‘fear of missing out’ is an epidemic that is stressing out us Millennials. We have a constant view to the world through the window known as Social Media, where we spend a fair amount of time refreshing the same pages looking at the highlights of other people’s lives, and wondering why we’re...

Top Tips For Freshers: part 3

2 Oct 2017

When I arrived at my room in Durham on 1st October 2016, I was already five hours late for the party – cows on the line at Peterborough. In all honesty, the disastrous train journey felt like a metaphor for the whole of the previous year: Having applied to Cambridge the previous September -...

Top Tips For Freshers: part 2

7 Aug 2017

Join societies

At nearly every uni there are a vast number of societies (and sports clubs too if you’re not, like me, allergic to sport.) These meet regularly and cater for all sorts of interests from real ale to politics. They’re a great way to meet like-minded people...

Top Tips For Freshers: part 1

1 Aug 2017

Starting university is nerve-wracking for most people, to one degree or another. For this reason, we've asked SCM members to write down their most helpful tips to prepare students-to-be for the new acaemic year and try to relieve some of that tension! Here is the first installment of advice, ...

SCM Launches the Christian Student Guide, a New Online Platform of Blogs, Recipes and Practical Tips for Living Life to the Full at Uni.

21 Jul 2017

Today marks the launch of The Christian Student Guide, a new website created by SCM that will engage current and future students with a relevant and inclusive Christian voice at university.

The website contains blogs, articles and prayers that encourage...