Drink-jenga, Mary Poppins and Nicolas Cage: What’s not to love about Raisin weekend?

When it comes to St Andrews propaganda, Raisin is up there with Prince William and Kate Middleton. Pictures of foam-covered freshers monopolise the website, the prospectuses, and the highlights of past students. In short, they are some of the first images that students see of St Andrews’ life.

Prospective students arrive at St Andrews in the knowledge that we’ll probably be alright as long as we don’t step on the PH, don’t fall off the pier, and are suitably excited about the prospect of waking up early one morning in late October, dressing up as something weird, and having a free-for-all with cans of shaving foam and thousands of other freshers.

Whilst all the publicity gave me a vague idea, I still didn’t actually know a lot about Raisin weekend when I arrived at St Andrews, except that it involved copious amounts of alcohol, and getting covered in foam on a freezing Scottish day in October: they both seemed like they might have some pretty troubling consequences.

Before you know it, the entire internet is covered in really flattering pictures of you covered in foam

I also had some idea about academic families. This led to a slight panic since, unlike other universities with family systems, at St Andrews you have to find your own parents. But this actually turned out to be a good thing.

Rather than having the kind of academic dad who pours pint glasses of straight vodka and wakes you up at 5 in the morning screaming “DOWN IT, FRESHER!”, I managed to find parents who were genuinely nice people, put tons of effort into Raisin and wanted to have fun – but they didn’t force anyone to do anything they didn’t want to.

Costumes worked well that way too. Someone this year was spotted walking towards the quad dressed as a giant penis. Not ideal. My academic sisters and I were the cast of Mary Poppins, which not only looked amazing, but was also a lot safer when it came to posting pictures on Facebook afterwards.

Our costumes were supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

But I do think it’s kind of sad that the foam fight tends to overshadow Raisin weekend itself when it comes to first descriptions.

Yes, a giant free-for-all with cans of shaving foam and thousands of students is a one of a kind experience; it’s weird and it’s funny and it’s a cool thing to say you’ve done. But, for me, Sunday, early Monday, and even the weeks of meeting up with and getting to know my academic families before Raisin, were much more memorable than the foam fight itself.

Raisin scavenger hunts involving serenading strangers, finding someone to donate a sock, and cramming as many people as possible into a telephone box turned out to be hilarious.

Alcohol themed pass the parcel, with dares and shots, was equally entertaining; so were three-legged races on South Street, and even eating as many strawberry laces as possible off the floor without using your hands.

At my dads there was drink Jenga, pizza, and ring of fire. Top tip: if you take a shot every time you knock down the Jenga, you’ll find yourself trapped in a dark cycle of empty shot glasses and scattered Jenga pieces, trying to remember which came first. I was exhausted by about 10pm, but it was the best kind of tiredness.

Raisin scavenger hunt with Hamish the cat, handfuls of sugar, and green faces, because why not?

I was also impressed by how good my mum and dad were at keeping secrets.

We didn’t find out what our costumes were until we arrived on Monday, which meant that when I  found out I wasn’t going to be dressed as the aforementioned giant penis, I was so much more excited than if I’d been safe in this knowledge all along. And if anyone knows an appropriate place to dress like a Victorian suffragette, let me know because I’ve fallen a bit in love with parts of my costume.

My dad had also refused to give any indication of what our raisin receipt would be, so when we arrived – superman, a witch, a boat, a Peanuts character, a nun and myself- we were told to stand in his garden while he went upstairs and got it.

I’ve never been so surprised or confused at any moment than when my academic dad and three of his friends came down the stairs, carrying a twelve foot cardboard figure of Nicolas Cage.

Things got even weirder when Nick Cage turned up

Nick looked pretty chilled about the whole thing

And there was a moment, halfway down North Street, dressed as a suffragette from Mary Poppins, carrying “giant, sexy Nicolas Cage” through the gates of Scotland’s oldest university, that I realised that this was without doubt the weirdest situation I’d ever been in in my life.

And that, actually, I couldn’t wait for next year, to watch it all happen again.