Leicester Freshers A-Z 2013, Part 3

It’s the final chapter. The concluding third of the your guide to all things Leicester, we’ve covered the places you want to eat, the places you want to live and things to take a look at during your three years in Leicester. This section will take us through most of Leicester’s student nights out, leaving the messiness to be covered at a later date, and covering the most important date in every Leicester students’ calendar…Varsity Day.

R is for Red Leicester

By now, you’ll all have experienced the cheesy delights of Wednesday’s Red Leicester. You’ll have seen the Hockey Club occupying the majority of the left hand side of the O2 Academy and the Rugby Club wandering around in their lovely pink shirts. The chances are if you go, you’ll be in fancy dress almost every week you attend and if you’re not, you’ll find hundreds of people that are. If you love cheese, Wednesday’s will be your new favourite night of the week. The best part is that it doesn’t matter if you’re lactose intolerant, you can still party your Wednesday (and waste Thursday in bed) to your hearts content! If you didn’t go out on Wednesday and are unsure what actually classifies as ‘Cheese’, click the link below and look at the related videos…

R is also for Republic

Many of you will also have been to Leicester’s Club Republic. They hosted the Thai Moon UV Party and will be hosting Monday’s Freshers Bar Crawl. On October 14th, Republic resumes it’s normal Monday night service bringing DMU and Leicester University together in one huge, drunken labyrinth. They’ll have their normal drinks offers of £2.50 vodka mixers and £2.50 bottles of Stella. The best bit about Republic is the fact there are 5 rooms, if you fancy R&B and hip-hop you’ll be able to find it, if you like cheese head over to the cheese room…they cater for everyone! You’ll be loving Monday almost as much as Wednesday and Friday. If there is one thing to remember it’s that you shouldn’t mess with the Monday-Wednesday-Friday system…they are the days to go out!

 S is for Stash

Stash. The clothing of the BNOC. It’s easy to spot on campus and signifies a person who loves their chosen sport so much they have to put it in everyone’s face. The typical items worn around campus are the club gilet, tracksuit bottoms or hoodie. They normally feature personalisation and the cute acronym of the club. With that little rant complete it’s probably worth saying that getting stash is the next thing on my to-do list.

S is also for Shabang

By now you’ll more than likely have had your first shabangover. A shabangover is a wonderful experience that takes place on Saturdays, it’s caused by the excessive consumption of £1 VK’s at the SU’s Friday night event, Shabang. As the saying goes ‘I’d love a shabang’ and most of Leicester’s students find it hard to resist the charty goodness offered by Shabang. Occasionally they play something that isn’t on the standard playlist and everyone goes mad for it but by the end of the year you can expect to have memorised the order of the songs, even if you don’t remember what you actually did when you were there.

T is for Thursday?

Thursdays are mystical. They are mostly wasted because Wednesday night’s Red Leicester was so heavy. Anyone who goes on a bar crawl on Wednesday will not be liking the fact that Thursday comes around so fast. Horrible things happen on Thursday mornings and throughout the day. This phenomenon can also happen on Tuesdays after Republic’s huge night, I Love Mondays. Essentially, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday will be a write-off pretty much every week.

U is for Unitemps

Unitemps is a franchise that is there to help students find temporary work whilst at university. During your time at Leicester you’ll probably not hear about anyone who found work through unitemps as it’s not known how many people the they help. If you’re after part-time work it’s probably better to go into town and see if there are any vacancies.

V is for Varsity

Varsity is the biggest two weeks of the university’s sporting calendar. Teams from different sports are competing every day over varsity fortnight and you can attend as many of the events as you want. The only ones you have to pay for are Rugby and Football, the only reason is that the first teams play at the home of the Leicester Tigers, Welford Road, and Leicester City FC’s home ground, The King Power Stadium. You’ll be able to catch up with the teams and the players at the after-parties, one is held at Red Leicester and one at Republic…the choice is yours. You might even get to see the winning team drink from their newly won silverware.

W is for Work

It doesn’t matter what you study at Leicester, the unfortunate truth is that you will always have some work to do. Partying, drinking and going out will occupy a large percentage of your time but you do have to fulfil your educational requirements, as much as you would love not to. Don’t freak yourself out though, most people will get a 2:1 and in almost every degree, your first year doesn’t count! I don’t think we could stress enough here at The Tab that you really should make the most of your first year, and indeed all of your time here because it’ll fly by.

X is for X-Ray and Observational Astronomy Group

The XROA is one of the world leaders in high energy and observational astrophysics. The Group has a broad multi-wavelength research programme which aims to answer many of the most interesting questions in modern astrophysics…

…Okay, who am I kidding. There isn’t a whole lot going on in Leicester that starts with X, this is probably one of the best. The other option was just X-Ray, if you play a sport then it might be likely that you’ll need one at some point during your university sporting career.

Y is for…

Well if I’m honest, I don’t think there is anything for Y either. I can’t even attempt to blag my way through four or five lines of text for the letter Y because there simply isn’t anything that I can think. Sorry…

Z is for Zoanthropy

It’s an interesting word and new to me as well. Zoanthropy is a delusion in which one believes oneself to be an animal. It seems like quite a common delusion amongst students of Leicester University, especially on a Wednesday. Perhaps there is a research question in there somewhere. The source of the problem has already been established, it’s name is Primark. As much as I would love to criticise people for wearing animal print onesies from the well known shop, Red Leicester is zoo themed on October 16th, so any argument would instantly become invalid as 2000 students descend on the O2 Academy dressed identically.

RAWRRRR