Is there anything like ‘free time’ in St Andrews?

At the beginning of September, important academic and professionals travelled to our coastal town to join the celebrations and a discussion with students and other academic on the challenges that we, as a society, will face in the near future. It was absolutely incredible experience because I had the chance to hear inspirational speeches from people like Judith Butler, Tim Berners-Lee or Hilary Clinton on the very same day.

As a third year student I only have two subjects per semester. On one hand, it gives one a plethora of free time that needs to be filled in (preferably with reading). On the other hand, it requires you to have very high self-discipline because it is relatively easy not to do anything productive the whole week, but in such a case there is no way you can understand the material discussed or actively contribute in tutorial discussions. One of my subjects this semester is IPT (International Political Theory) that is focused on the normative side of international political theories. While it might sounds incredibly boring for some, we have a brilliant professor who helps us apply ideas from older political texts on modern problems like global warming, humanitarian intervention or LGBT rights. Currently, I am also working on an essay that is going to analyse so called philanthropic colonialism of the West through relative innocent concepts of volunteering, charity or development aid.

Last time, I mentioned that I had been elected to the leadership of the St Andrews Student Union as an Education Officer. As such, I am responsible for student representation in communication with the University on issues like the quality of teaching or accessibility to study resources, and I also help to oversee the active School President & Class Representatives system that works here in St Andrews. This month, we managed to push for a more transparent student feedback which should make it easier to address issues with learning and teaching that arise throughout the semester. Currently, I am also working on a Student Library Survey that will be sent to all students and will hopefully serve as a useful set of data in campaigning on extended opening hours or accessibility of library resources.

This year, I also coordinate charity events in all 10 halls of residence across St Andrews. During the summer, I managed to set up a Hall Champions League, in which halls would be able to get points for charity fundraising, taking part in sport tournaments and saving energy. Apart from organization of several inter-hall charity events, the most unusual experience was ordering 3,000 cans of foam for one of the best known St Andrews traditions – Raisin Monday Foam Fight. A week before the event, we sold this foam in halls of residence and managed to raise around £2,000 for charity. This initiative even made it briefly to a BBC article on St Andrews so I also got my 15 minutes of fame.

Raisin Monday Foam Fight

Moreover, I also decided to take part in Race2Berlin, one of the biggest St Andrews charity events, and this January I will be hitchhiking together with two friends of mine from St Andrews to Berlin in order to raise money for charity. (If you remember correctly, last year I was helping out with a similar project that had Prague as its destination.)

So what is the answer to the original question? There is a lot of free time in St Andrews, but if it is not filled with reading or doing for tutorials, it is filled in with running around the Student Union or organizing of charity events. Due to all of this, I have never had time to get bored in St Andrews and I would like to say massive ‘Thanks’ to The Kellner Family Foundation for making it possible for me to take part in all of these wonderful activities!