By Ritika Sharma

Photo by The Royal Danish Library on Unsplash

Before classes begin, before deadlines tighten their grip, something else happens on campus—something noisy, messy, a little awkward, and profoundly necessary.

It's Welcome week.

At first glance, it looks like chaos: scavenger hunts, icebreakers, neon bracelets under pulsing lights, and strangers shouting trivia answers in a mock game show. But beneath the surface, Welcome Week isn’t about free T-shirts or awkward introductions. It’s about something quieter and deeper: building a foundation for belonging in a place where, at first, no one belongs.

There’s no slow introduction to university life—you’re thrown in all at once. That intensity is what makes Welcome Week powerful.

Lost on Day One: Why Discomfort is the Point

The first campus tour always feels absurd. A pack of students trails behind an overly energetic leader, who insists that this path is a shortcut and that building is where you’ll live. But no matter how many stops are made, someone still ends up lost.

Oddly enough, that’s the point. To be lost is to admit vulnerability, to recognize the strangeness of being new. When students glance around and realize half the group is equally confused, the very discomfort becomes a bond. It’s less about memorizing maps than about realizing you’re not wandering alone.

Family Feud and Red-Flag Superheroes: The Science of Shared Laughter

Then come the games—sometimes silly, sometimes outright bizarre. At “Family Feud,” questions are asked like: If you were in the car alone, what would you do? Or: Which superhero is the biggest red flag? Who would you never date?

It sounds ridiculous, and that’s the point. When a room erupts in laughter over a debate about Spider-Man’s dating potential, the walls between strangers crumble. Shared laughter prompts the release of oxytocin—sometimes called the “bonding hormone”—which helps foster trust and closeness among people. In practice, it feels simpler: a shared joke becomes the first thread in a web of belonging.

Awkwardness doesn’t block connection—it creates it.

Rules of Survival: Freedom Meets Responsibility

Some sessions, however, don’t sugarcoat the reality of university life. At Start Strong Strategies, the room shifts from playful to serious. The message lands with weight: freedom here is real, but so is responsibility. No professor will chase you for assignments. No one will tell you when to go to bed, when to study, or how to balance a social life with academics.

This is where the transition hits hardest. The safety nets of high school vanish, replaced with the demand for self-discipline. Educators call it a “responsibility shift,” and it often feels brutal at first. But the seminar doesn’t just outline pitfalls; it provides tools: time management, goal setting, and resilience. Freedom, after all, isn’t an escape from structure. It’s learning to build your own.

Glow Parties and Gen Z Psychology

At night, the tone changes again. The Welcome to the Gorsebrook glow party pulses with music, ultraviolet light, and strangers moving together as if they’ve known each other for years.

This is where Welcome Week speaks the language of its generation. For many, the first connections aren’t built in quiet conversations but on the dance floor, exchanged through Instagram handles and laughter. A sweaty, awkward dance with a stranger becomes a DM the next morning, which evolves into a group chat, and eventually blossoms into a friendship.

Connection doesn’t always begin in lecture halls. Sometimes, it starts under neon lights.

The Strangest Trust Fall: Tied Hands and Rising Together

Few moments capture the spirit of Welcome Week in the Huskies field better than the Opening Celebration at PUMP. Under a blazing sun, students are told to hold up a number of fingers, find someone with the same number, and pair off. The next thing you know, you’re back-to-back with a stranger, arms tied, trying desperately to stand up together.

The ground becomes a wrestling mat of laughter, groans, and tangled limbs. And in the absurdity lies a lesson: no one rises alone. To get up, you literally lean on someone else. It’s a physical metaphor for what the year ahead will demand—cooperation, trust, and the humility to fall before you find your footing.

Dunking the President: When Leadership Means Vulnerability

The Husky Festival offers a different kind of lesson. A dunk tank sits at the center of the celebration, and in the chair above it isn’t a performer but the President of the university and the President of the student union.

Students line up, aiming balls at the target, laughing when their leaders plunge into icy water. The symbolism is striking: authority here doesn’t wall itself off. It makes itself approachable, even playful. To see those in power soaked and smiling is to understand that leadership, at its best, is not about intimidation but about shared humanity. When those at the top make themselves open, students are more willing to do the same.

Paint, Mocktails, and the Art of Simply Showing Up

By the end of the week, energy runs low, and the events grow quieter. At Paint & Sip, brushes move across canvas as mocktails clink in hand. The paintings themselves are messy—some brilliant, some half-finished—but no one seems to mind. What matters is the circle of chairs, the unspoken welcome that says: you belong at this table, no matter what your art looks like.

Social scientists refer to these as “minimal social interactions.”

Small, casual, and deceptively powerful, they allow friendships to settle in without pressure. Belonging doesn’t always come with fireworks. Sometimes, it comes with brushstrokes and the simple act of sitting down.

Welcome Week Is a Bridge, Not a Party

By the week’s end, what lingers isn’t the details of the schedule. It’s the texture of it all: the laughter that turned strangers into teammates, the mistakes that became inside jokes, the leaders who invited trust by getting soaked, the quiet reassurance of finding a seat at the table.

Every awkward game, every silly question, every splash in the dunk tank works in subtle ways. They replace fear with familiarity, loneliness with laughter, and strangers with companions.

Welcome Week isn’t a soft landing. It’s a headfirst dive into discomfort—into noise, awkwardness, and uncertainty. But it’s in that plunge that belonging begins.

And that, more than anything, is why it works.

The Hidden Psychology of Welcome Weeks