Steven Sinclair

A trip to the hills…

Every student enrolling on a university course of their choice can expect, at some point in their academic career, to embark on curious wanderings and journeys to further their knowledge and understanding of the discipline they have undertaken. Depending on the subject of course, it may be an often occurrence, or a one-off trip in some dust filled corner of the curriculum diet. Either way, it gets the 'budding' student out into the world to practice those shiny new skills and use that bam-boozeled knowledge acquired from lectures and piles of books that are only skimmed over briefly.

As part of my course (Geography) curriculum, a week long fieldtrip saw roughly 100+ students and accompanying lecturers descending on the small town of Aviemore in the Scottish Highlands. The primary objective of the trip involved the practice and utilisation of skills gained and achieved throughout the previous two and a half years of academia in a real human and physical environment. Taking into consideration Aviemore's proximity to Inverness and the semi-wilderness it is an ideal setting for such practice of both disciplines. While this, of course, was fulfilled to achieve the needed grades for the year, as can be expected 100+ students in a remote(ish) location turns out to be a once in university-lifetime experience that anyone would regret missing.

New students at university are, without doubt, thrown into a remarkable social life whether they want to be or not. In a matter of days personalities are being forced together quicker than those dandy atoms in the LHC. Friends are made and groups eventually coalesce to create an almost impenetrable comfort zone for the sleep-deprived student.

However, no matter how many friends are made in your life you can never have too many. The aforementioned formation of social groups only continued into a class-wide explosion of social activity over the week and admittedly, it is most likely that other subjects do not quite experience nor achieve such successful bonding of students.

With four full days of hard-grinding work and trudging through opposite extremes of the weather spectrum it was certainly hard going. But the prospect of relaxing to the clinking of bottles, guzzling of ridiculous quantities of alcohol and copious sums of hilarity at the end made it all that more bearable, knowing full well that no night would pass without a good time. Unlikely friendships were created, expanded and reinforced over that one week and the tangibility of the closeness between everyone is still very evident nearly a year on.

They say that Geography is one of the highly employable subject areas to study at University, teaching you valuable skills such as numeracy, team-working, fieldwork and research. However, it also needs to be remarked that no matter student background, focus, interest and personality there is in, no way, a single doubt that the social aspect is developed three-fold over school familiarity, leaving you with experiences and memories with friends that can be carried from academic and personal life to professional careers and old-age.