Stockholm School of Economics in Riga Students' Magazine

Every student in SSER has experienced the joy when they got that fateful letter from administration saying that they have been admitted to SSER. Just in time when everybody starts to celebrate the end of high school and admission to the university of their dreams, they receive a strange email from the Student Association inviting them to the first big event, which becomes the top priority of almost every freshly admitted student - the Newcomers Camp. So this year students took out their red pens and marked 15th and 16th of August with bright red circles.

On August 15th one by one the newcomers tried to get till the meeting point in Ropaži. The choice was up to them - some took a car or went on the bus on their own, some just got into the bus with another 40 people from the camp and tried to have some small talks with his/her “cell mates” for the next three years, and some were driving theirs car at 120km/h just not to be late already on the first day. Those who were driving with the bus faced already the first task - walking 6 km with all of their bags to the place of event. However, it turned out that in a group it’s not that bad, but actually even fun. 

When everybody had gathered in the meeting place and was trying to get used to new, friendly faces all around, Henrijs used the opportunity and began the Camp with a welcoming speech from the roof of a car. After that the SA Presidential couple Kristaps and Egle had just managed to get out of the car when they also had to make a speech and then the event was finally able to start with a full speed. Each of the newcomers got their compadres and the games began. The first ones were dedicated to getting to know each other, which turned out to be a rather complicated task because of all the new names from LT, LV and EE, which were never heard before.

After the lunch with our beloved Cola, Sprite, yogurts and chips the real games began. In the already existing groups you could have as much fun during 8 assignments as you wanted! The most popular ones were the game with the stick and “the naked game” as everyone called it. Some year 2 students announced that in the Newcomers Camp people always are just C-R-A-Z-Y, but usually it gets hot only by night after some drinking games. This year it was slightly different. Speechless year 2 and 3 students could only watch how the new ones were pulling down ALL their clothes just to win the competition. Of course boys were over the moon because of the girls without their bras.

During the “stick game” you could hear the funniest comments like “You need to touch the stick on the right place”, “it’s much easier to do it from underneath” or “I’m getting moisturized under the stick”. One couldn’t just understand why is the stick going up when everybody is pulling fingers down! 

According to the comments, also the game which involved carrying around girls didn’t fall behind. The idea was to carry around melons but it quickly turned into carrying feminine sex, while the crazy guys were shouting phrases like “Hold your girl and you’ll get your pussy!”

Sadly, but in the end no one recognized few year 2’s and the year 3 student Taavi, who were trying to pass off as fake students among the new ones. In the evening games were followed by the drinking game, where people had to be creative: “I have never been drinking in such interesting & original ways”. In the mean time, a vast majority of people just grabbed some sausages which disappeared in record time.

By the nighttime everybody was having a good time together with their new friends, some fresh couples were sitting around in some dark corners and the lights didn’t go out during whole night. 

On August 16th people or what was left of them, packed their bags and promised each other to see them in the school. There were only good comments about the camp and the new friends:

“It’s hard to express the feelings… Awesome!” (Kaspars);

“I enjoyed the nice day” (Krišjānis);

“I have never participated in such interesting competitions! The main thing was the originality of having fun!” (Vadim)

By Laura Danberga