O Week is chaotic, but through this chaos many doors can be opened, writes Hugh Askerud.
As a 17-year-old I, somewhat foolishly, ventured on to a crowded Castle St in the middle of O Week.
It was the night I visited my first decrepit student flat, the night I chipped my tooth on a bottle of wine, and the night I found myself arm in arm with one of my now closest friends drunkenly singing amid students two or three years our elders.
In my mind, O Week will always be tied to the memory of that night. There is a reason so many students past, present and future continue to have identity shaping memories such as this in O Week. In some ways it’s the feeling — the "I’ve escaped" sensation which signals the dawn of adulthood.
But most of all it’s the people you meet and the relationships you build in the surrounding carnage. O Week is chaotic, sure, but through this chaos many doors can be opened.
Endless possibilities are at the fingertips of students who have the opportunity to reach out and go for the new relationships and wondrous experiences on offer in Dunedin’s own cesspool of possibility.
From meeting the love of your life on a bench to funnelling alcohol through a road cone, the possibilities are endless. O Week undoubtedly has its flaws, but the meaning it provides to so many allows the event to continue thriving.
Today signals the start of O Week, leaving first- and fourth-years alike, abuzz at the prospect of another excuse to have a good time.
Castle St is already thudding with noise and my flat is currently preparing a meal to last us until we can cook again (likely two or three days away).
In the quiet before the storm, we sit around egging one another on for the wild nights to follow; supported by the mountain of couches donated by parents and other obscure relations.
The neighbours, or friends from a few houses down, will pop in briefly before returning to their flats usually less than a minute’s walk away. In a community where many are struggling financially, the currency dealt in is people.
Two beef patties lose their value when not split six ways so everyone can have a morsel. As such, living in occasionally squalid conditions doesn’t seem as bad when you have four or five others to share your struggle.
While the destitute nature of this existence continues, so, too, do the beating hearts of students all around campus, making for one hell of an O Week flatting experience.
I am buzzing for the week ahead and I look forward to writing again, hopefully with stories to tell of a week in good company.
— University of Otago politics and religious studies student Hugh Askerud (19) is sharing an insider’s view of O Week as thousands of students mark the beginning of a new academic year.
What’s on
Tent City: Monday to Wednesday, 9am to 4pm, at the Museum Reserve
Throwback Theatre: Monday and Tuesday, 8:30pm to 10:30pm, at the Museum Reserve
