From Freshers Week to mock trials and speech competitions

The first days in college can be daunting for even the most outgoing students. After all, there is a lot to take in - not only will first year students (aka freshers) have to familiarise themselves with the campus layout and where to find the café - not to mention the library and lecture halls – most will also seek out new friends and acquaintances.

And, speaking from experience, one quick way to achieve the latter is by joining a student society.

Trinity College Dublin’s Law Society was founded in 1933 and for 89 years it has strived to provide its members with opportunities to socialise, to engage in discourse and build experience.

However, in its 86th, 87th and 88th year, the Law Society faced a huge obstacle in fulfilling its aims: The Covid 19 pandemic.

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Now in its 89th year the Law Society has plans to once again provide opportunities to socialise and to engage in wide-ranging discourse and debate. If you started college last year or the year before that, you may not know this but for many, those are the things that define “normal” college life.

As a Trinity student going into her fourth year, I can say that with authority, because I am a member of the only year group in Trinity, and across fellow Irish universities, who actually experienced this life, before it evaporated one evening in March 2020.

This year, the plan is for college freshmen to experience normal college life. Starting with Freshers Week.

This is a week where student societies, such as LawSoc, organise events, nights out, competitions and mixers. It is a taste of what life as a college student feels like for those who are fresh out of the Leaving Cert cycle.

As luck would have it, the first society that I signed up to during my Freshers Week was the LawSociety.

Four years later, I am now the Auditor of Trinity Law Society, a post once held by former President Mary Robinson. As a first year student, merely paying €2 because I was promised LawSoc threw the best parties, I could never have imagined this.

I signed up to LawSoc because they were giving me free pizza, told me they would hold the largest student ball of the year - LawBall - and because they had Michelle from Derry Girls speaking to them that afternoon in one of the lecture theatres.

It looked like fun and everyone wearing their LawSoc t-shirt looked exactly how I imagined college students would look. I signed up because Law Soc membership was how I could transform from a recent Leaving Cert survivor to a bona fide college student. I wasn’t wrong.

I asked different members of the LawSoc how they think it has shaped their time in college.

Hana, a second-year Religion student signed up and found that she “met like-minded students” and got to engage in “intellectual discussion”. Those from my pre-pandemic generation found that they were “never short of a party to go to” after signing up.

Even members who joined in the midst of social distancing and mask wearing like Cormac, our third year rep, said Lawsoc has been “central” to his experience in college and it is where he has come to know his closest friends.

Maybe Amy put it best when she said that “creating so many new connections with people in other years as well as my own and with people in and out of law would not have been possible if I had not joined LawSoc!”

In a post Covid 19 climate, the fate of freshers’ normal college life lies in the hands of societies and clubs that they will inevitably subscribe to during this much talked about Freshers Week.

For anyone leaving sixth year and wondering what is ahead, I can only tell you what was ahead of me, but as one of the only remaining college students who got the normal freshmen experience that you will get (for the most part - hopefully yours is not prematurely ended by a global pandemic), my word is as good as anyone’s.

In a normal college year, the Law Society hosts two balls a year. We arrange mock trials and speech competitions.

In the first month of college, we bring first-year students on a trip to Galway. We have a law day to raise money for a chosen charity, we have careers events and this year we have a new Diversity and Equality day.

We throw regular club nights, we host receptions with pizza and wine and we have representatives in each year group who are a great point of contact for any law student members looking for information.

This is normal college life. This and the odd “in person” lecture of course. Becoming a member of LawSoc gave me access to this life and this was just as a member. As a committee member, I have met incredible people, from Supreme Court Justices to Patrick Dempsey.

I have built experience organising events and planning dinners, I have liaised with celebrity agents, law firms and senior college staff. I have learned what my skills are and how I want to use them to forge a career.

This year, freshers can get into college and get stuck in. You are the students that colleges have been waiting for. You are the students who will get to define “normal” college life again. You are the students who will get the opportunities to socialise and engage in wide-ranging and invigorating discourse for three full years or longer.

If you plan on coming to Trinity, the LawSociety, in its 89th year, will make sure of it.