Why you should consider going on tour during reading week

It is finally reading week, which means a week away from the stresses of university life for Arts students. Because there are no classes this week, a lot of people take advantage of the time off to go away. Consequently, a lot of the Arts societies organise their society tour, which is a trip abroad, during this week.

Now, the idea of it is to catch up with assignments and, surprisingly, to do a little reading, but I hope I  don’t need to tell you that this isn’t really the case. In fact, as one of my lecturers says, we should call it ‘Go-home-and-do-laundry Week’ instead and I think she’s only half-joking.

I’ve personally been on two tours both with the French society, and just wanted to touch on my experiences of the first one. So, the rundown, I went away for 5 days, Bruges in Belgium for 3 and Luxembourg for 2. Pretty decent, albeit cold. It was nice, I made new friends and discovered some art and culture.

One of my lecturers says we should call it ‘Go-home-and-do-laundry Week’ instead and I think she’s only half joking

What I want to address now is what can only be considered as the bane of my life when it comes to travelling: packing. I try and offload it to other people, but considering I was alone at university and had to fend for myself during this time, I thought I would let all you packing-haters here in on some tips.

Step one, always check the weather of the place to which you’re going. It’ll help you make sure you pick appropriate clothes, which is going to be really handy when you’ve got limited packing space. A problem does arise when you’re going to a cold place, though, and you’re packing heavy-duty hoodies and jumpers, which brings me to…

Step two, think about the logistics. If you have a thick coat, several hoodies and jeans, and a very small suitcase, what does that leave you with? Not a lot of space. However, what I find is that rolling your clothes gives you more space – put all the rolls next to each other and then you can stack stuff on top of the rolls. Smart, right?

You make new friends, you get to discover another country and it’s just generally a wonderful thing to add to the overall university experience

Now, people tend to make a mental list of the stuff they need, I know I do. But follow it up with a paper list as that way you really reduce the risk of forgetting stuff. If you’re going on tour, first years, DO NOT FORGET YOUR ROOM KEY! Write it twice on the list if you have to. And that’s about it for the list. Make sure you take the essentials of course, like your passport, money, KEY AGAIN, toiletries, and oh-my-god-I-sound-like-my-mother… But to be honest, if you forget a minor thing, like a toothbrush, you can probably pick it up at a local shop.

Back to tour. It’s great. You make new friends, you get to discover another country (which I personally love), and it’s just generally a wonderful thing to add to the overall university experience. I would highly recommend it to anyone who’s looking to discover somewhere new, as well as getting to know people on your course if you end up going with a society that corresponds to your degree, like me and French society. So for those of you that are off to somewhere nice, have a great time everyone!