Current events (especially many goodbyes from friends who did their year abroad here) made me want to write a bit about the life besides studying. And we can all agree that student life is much more than just sitting in the lecture room, the library or going on a multitude of field trips (okay, the last one is actually more leisure time than work).

As I mentioned in my first entry, I already spent a year in Durham as part of my Austrian Archaeology degree. Even though I had the luck and privilege of being assigned to Castle College last year – something I was always envied for by other Erasmus students – I never truly was a part of the college since I lived far away and was not present enough to establish myself within the group. Therefore, major parts of college life passed by and I got used to stick around with other international students and people from different university societies. But this year, I actively chose to be more involved and to get the full so-called ‘Durham Experience’ everybody was talking about. And everything started out with me just being lazy. But sometimes even being lazy pays off.

With laziness…

Since I was already familiar with the overall structure of Durham and I knew that I would again live in private accommodation in Gilesgate (for a simple reason: it is the cheapest area to life without being too far away from everything), I applied for the College of St Hild and St Bede, which is basically a 5 minutes’ walk away. Others might have taken their chances by applying for the more fancy Castle (which only takes a small number of students) or did not even apply for any college, which both results most likely in being assigned to Ustinov College….the postgraduate college on the hill which might have a wonderful selection of Whisky but is half an hour away from the city centre….and everything else.

My life in Hild Bede started with Freshers week, which meant getting to know people, having the matriculation ceremony and of course lots of parties. Even within the first few days it became obvious which people would stick together until the bitter end, but also a great dynamic between many of the postgraduates developed until this day. (On this notion, special thanks to Gabriel Fidler, our postgraduate president, who did everything in his power to spend hours and hours of organising film nights, parties, talks and lots of other events.)

…comes great responsibility

All these activities led very soon to the circumstance that everybody completely identified themselves with the college, something that holds the community together even stronger. I also felt that it might be great to give something back to the community by getting involved not only in consuming all the events and benefits of college life but also actively help and participate in the planning process. Therefore, when I was approached if I was interested into running for one of the executive roles for our postgraduate society, I couldn’t say no.

After being presented and judged by almost 10% of the whole postgraduates (did I mention that even with all the fabulous events it might get very hard to motivate people to attend anything?), I had a hard election to win against RON (re-open nomination) and the number of votes needed to reach quorum (which we did only reach by a few people…after the second run).

My role from that point on: Colloquium Coordinator and Academic Representative. Also known as the person who harasses everybody if they want to give a talk at some point about their research or interests to enhance the academic life within college. However, even though everybody in the exec has a particular role he/she is supposed to fulfil, we all work together and help each other organising events such as film nights, Karaoke, Chinese New Year, game nights and much more.

Still, special credit has to be given to Lydia, who created the most impressive Harry Potter Formal dinner (including a REAL OWL) with months of preparation (where I could discover my artistic talent by painting decoration…but only after pre-prepared sketches by people who are actually talented), and Charlotte, who was the perfect person to organise parties with her love and talent for costumes and decoration. And again: Gabriel, who is basically involved in everything.

Special thanks goes to…

I want to end this entry by especially thanking those who already left us (or will be gone soon) but have been irreplaceable friends over the whole year (and potential travel destinations in the years to come) who were here on their Erasmus year abroad and part of Hild Bede: Franco, Laura and Hélène. From the very beginning to the bitter end, we had a great time. And we will have even more of it when we visit each other, either in France, Italy, Austria or somewhere else.

Christoph Doppelhofer