An amazing thing about Bournemouth University definitely has to be the incredible sports facilities and the ridiculously diverse range of societies. If you’re keen to stay active at uni, there are teams for football, rugby, hockey, netball , lacrosse…. (the list goes on…)

As well as the Varsity sports teams, there are also social sessions throughout the week that you can just pop along to with no necessary commitment.  These are great as there isn’t a trial to get in and as I stopped playing netball at college as soon as my workload built up, I never imagined I would be able to play regularly at Bournemouth without being at a competitive level. Getting involved with the social sessions is great too as it allows you to meet lots of other people on different courses. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t played at all or if you are an experienced player, everyone is so friendly that it’s so easy just to play along.

Turtle spotting with the Wildlife Conservation Society

There are a couple of sessions a week where we do training and friendly matches. Quite a lot of the time, there are new people dipping in and out so everyone normally has a chance to play in many of the different positions and with different people. I’d recommend giving these sessions a go even if you never liked the sport at school – it is so different!

Another good way to meet new people is to join a society: the number of societies available to join is incredible, and if you can’t find one you like, you can start up your own! They range from Performing Arts to Quidditch to Animation to African-American…

Supporting the Big Band Society at a local event

Depending on what the society is, they normally meet a couple of times a semester. The nature of the meeting depends on the society, for example, the Wildlife Conservation Society holds volunteering sessions, pub crawls, camping trips and talks from guest speakers whereas the surfing society hold weekly surf sessions, a big surf trip and many bar crawls and nights out. Most courses also have a correlating society, for example, there is an English and a Marketing society. Even if you are not part of the specific course, if you have an interest you can join the society anyway!

As with most things at uni, there is no necessary commitment and if you find that you can’t attend a meet due to a heavy workload or you have friends down, that is no problem! The beginning of the year holds a fresher’s fair where societies get to promote themselves and recruit new members. Fresher’s fair is a must for any fresher – even if it is just for the freebies! For me, joining societies has been a really great way of keeping up the hobbies I had before coming to uni (writing and travelling) while making new friends.