'I can still hear the deafening silence': My Freshers' Week memories and starting out at Scottish university

I can still hear the deafening silence, almost a quarter of a century after arriving at university to start the next chapter in life.

It came at the end of a somewhat awkward meal on my first day at the Halls of Residence, after one of the more confident individuals around the table invited everyone to a bonfire that was being arranged by Aberdeen University’s Christian Union that evening.

I had nothing against the Christian Union, but this was not what I had envisaged doing on the first night of Freshers’ Week. So I plucked up the courage to enquire if anyone fancied skipping the bonfire and going straight to the pub.

In a shattering blow, nobody responded.

Students from the University of Edinburgh. Picture: Lisa Ferguson

So there I found myself, at the bonfire, on the edge of the North Sea on a cold September night in Seaton, contemplating how I was going to survive as a student.

Before long, however, I started talking to Rowan. He had remained silent when I made my disastrous intervention in the dinner hall, but we seemed to share some of the same interests. In the end, we left the bonfire and went to the pub.

By all accounts, many of the students who have been arriving for Freshers’ Weeks at universities across Scotland this month have less interest in the drinking culture of the past.

But these kinds of nervous interactions will no doubt remain the same whatever the circumstances, as thousands of young adults embark on a new life, often in different surroundings, away from their families and old support networks.

The day after my encounter with Rowan, a skater from Glenrothes, I got to know Nathan, an Edinburgh drummer with whom I shared a family connection. Rowan introduced me to James, a smooth-talker from North Berwick, and we soon met Fraser, an identical twin from Alva.

This was followed by the likes of Blair, an opinionated Moray rocker with a Mohican haircut, as well as an Aberdeenshire farmer called Guthrie, a quiet Kinross lad called Drew, and several others.

I remember meeting each one, and ended up sharing flats with them all in the subsequent years. We still meet up whenever we can, and Guthrie and myself were the best men at Drew’s wedding.

We came from different types of schools, areas and backgrounds, but friendships were developed over the subsequent days, weeks and months, sometimes by finding each other in the same lectures and tutorials, but more often on nights out in Aberdeen’s legendary - now closed - student union, or during the long days recovering in Halls, arguing over music and politics, while watching Neighbours and ordering giant, square-shaped Gatecrasher pizzas via Snapfax.

Aberdeen University | popovj2 - stock.adobe.com

There are, arguably, more productive ways to spend your Freshers Week, and your student days generally. I emerged with a degree four years later, but I find it hard to quantify its value.

Sometimes I wonder what advice I would give my own children about whether or not they should head off to university after school, if they have the chance.

The conclusion is always the same, however. Of course I would recommend they go, if only for the life-long friendships you make, and the memories, however hazy.

It is hard not to be jealous of the generation just starting out on that journey, awkward social encounters and all.