For our Hugh’s students, yesterday was a day all about new ideas. 

The Experimental Psychology students from our New Perspectives Programme have been discussing some of the more difficult questions of psychology this week, like what makes you you, and what makes you different from other people. It’s been a fascinating experience for our students to look in-depth at aspects of themselves they’ve never questioned before, but it’s certainly been a busy time taking on board so many new theories.

Another set of new perspectives arrived on campus in the afternoon with our guest speakers, Alex Holmes and Alex Staniforth. The interactive talk Alex Holmes gave on bullying focused on reminding our students that differences between them are what make them all valuable individuals. Meanwhile Alex Staniforth encouraged our cohort to look at failure in a new way, drawing from his own life experiences to illustrate that initial defeat when approaching a goal can pave the way for a greater success later.

The evening’s set of new ideas were a little more superstitious as a group of students headed out on Bill Spectre’s ghost tour of Oxford. A city with as much history as Oxford is bound to have a few mysterious stories and the tour played on those excellently, using amazing props like a book that ‘catches fire’ to captivate its audience. Our students viewed Bill’s ghostly claims with a little more scepticism than they had our guest speakers’, but everyone loved the spooky atmosphere and theatrics!

Those students who preferred their evening a little more tangible got creative and put their ideas down on fabric with some tie-dye t-shirt making. Once everyone was back from the ghost tour, there was just time for one incredibly competitive game of football before bed.