You Receive: Free Pizza, I Receive: -£300 | Newsletter T1W1

Hello real, realer and realest people, your local Imaginary Secretary Raven brings you this opening newsletter for the academic year, after what has been an utterly crazy Welcome Week!

To all our newcomers, welcome, we hope you enjoy your time here, and to returners, welcome back once more, hope the summer didn't drive you insane :3

These newsletters will continue to arrive weekly, giving you info about upcoming events and an insight into the mental state of whoever is writing them.

But before we get into this week's events: a huge thank you to everybody who came to any of our Welcome Week events, it's a pleasure to have met so many of you, and we hope to continue seeing you around once fresher's flu stops kicking everybody's ass - we've also absolutely sky-rocketed to over 200 members for this academic year over the last week, which is super cool to see! From Adrian Chiles' OnlyFans doppelgänger in Friday's quiz, seemingly half the uni turning up to our barbecue, someone getting turned away from a pub on the pub definitely-not-crawl because... they shaved (yes, really lmao), being randomly asked by Greg about the DIMAP Bridge Instagram account because he wants to know who he's bantering with over the DCS Instagram, and far far more, a hell of a lot happened, and hopefully y'all found it useful and fun!

Special thanks to DCS to supporting various events too, as well as giving the opportunity for many of our exec and the other student ambassadors to lend a hand and run off with a lot of food

If you haven't already, it's a good idea to join our Discord and follow our Instagram to keep up-to-date with all we're organising (including a lot of going outside!), talk to fellow students, get academic help, and much more!

Welfare Notice

UWCS has 2 Welfare Officers: Raven (Discord: raven0034) and Thomas (Discord: tomo.li) - good chance you've seen us around already with the exec hoodies on, but especially since we have a lot of new people, we want to make ourselves known. You can speak to us in-person, or message us over Discord, and we can help give you advice and signpost when you're going through stuff, whether that's trying to navigate the various support systems within the uni, or something has happened involving a member of the society e.g. at an event, and more. Starting uni can especially be quite overwhelming, just know we're here to help, and it's okay to not be okay!

🍔 Pub Meal 🍔

🕖 Mon 6th Oct 7pm - 9pm 📍 The Dirty Duck

Don't worry, I did get my pizza in the end

Admittedly I am writing this newsletter after the pub meal, but shhhhh lmao

This marked the first of our weekly pub dinners, where we alternate between The Dirty Duck and Phantom Coach each Monday. It's a great vibe, and a good way to socialise, grab some food, and maybe a cheeky drink if you want - and especially now teaching is starting, sometimes yapping about which foodstuff to write about for the CS133 LaTeX labs is simply needed to relax!

📚 LeetCode Workshop - Binary Search (with CodeSoc) 📚

🕕 Tue 7th Oct 6pm - 7pm 📍 JX2.02

Mitosis: Never underestimate what the Might Of Toes Is

Don't worry, there's plenty more bad and not entirely related jokes where that one came from :3

The first workshop in a series of 5, we're kicking off a collaborative LeetCode effort with CodeSoc with a session on Binary Search in the Junction Building - come along, and hey, perhaps you'll conveniently learn concepts that turn out to be very coincidentally useful for various courseworks a lot of y'all'll do 👀

💬 Wildcards & Chill (Powerpoint) 💬

🕒 Wed 8th Oct 3pm - 5pm 📍 CS0.07

W-w-w-wildcards Wednesdays? 👉👈

To start off our weekly Wildcards event we want to get to know all of the Wildcards a lot better - how you may ask? Why, ridiculous and insane PowerPoints of course!

Do you have an interest you NEED people to know about? Perhaps why your favourite movie/game/musical is the BEST THING EVER CREATED™️? Or maybe you have some random informative presentation from 5 years ago?

Please bring your most unhinged presentations and come along!

(And if you need some ideas, DM Irene (eneri0564), she'll give you three interesting topics just for you)

The presentations don’t have to be long at all, and you can just come and watch if you want! (If there’s not enough presentations we’ll switch to board games so)

But most importantly - FREE DRINKS‼️‼️ The DCS vending machine is free for all Wildcards during the event's duration (FUUUUUUEEEEEELLLL)

📚 Internship Café 📚

🕔 Wed 8th Oct 5pm - 7pm 📍 CS1.04

What are these "internships" you speak of, I thought everybody just shitposts about geese and trees on LinkedIn!

Perhaps to your dismay, the 2026 application cycle is already well under way, and with even McDonalds and Spoons being weirdly picky about who they hire these days, it's good to get ahead of the curve early on. Come to CS1.04 and you'll get all the information you'll need to start out on your tech internship applications, with a 2 hour presentation covering CVs, interviews, online assessments, and more!

🥽 IntakeCTF 2025 Opening Event 🥽

🕡 Thu 9th Oct 6:30pm - 9pm 📍 IMC0.02

Take it in, pure cyber in the air, capture the flag in a far less frustrating experience than the COD gamemode

The opening event for CyberSoc & UWCS' 2025 IntakeCTF is this week, following on from the IntroToCTF session earlier in the week. The CTF is a hacking competition that has an absolute boatload of challenges testing problem solving and technical skills, with plenty available for beginners! It'll run for 4 days, and you can take part in teams of up to 4 people, along with prizes for fresher teams :)

(oh and, you didn't hear this from me, but apparently there's gonna be free pizza)

For DCS peeps, the IMC is to your right when you come out of the front of DCS - if you can't get in because of card access issues, make sure to join the CyberSoc Discord and you can ask exec there to get you in!

🐍 XSoc Python Course (Session 1) 🐍

🕖 Thu 9th Oct 7pm - 9pm 📍 MS0.04

Whilst you don't get a pet snake, you do get to hiss and curse at a programming language, so hey, swings and roundabouts

Our yearly cross-society Python course makes a return once more, with the debut session covering variables, types and debugging. It's the start of a neat little crash course to Python, and is also quite friendly to those who've not touched any code before but want to give it a crack!

🏃 Run Club 🏃

🕔 Fri 10th Oct 5pm - 6pm 📍 Outside DCS

Zoomie zoomie zoomie zombie zombie zombie hrrrl rrrruuuhhhhh i-e i-e owsh owsh i-e i-e eurgh

Don't worry, the sunlight won't kill you, and you can take full advantage of this with Run Club returning to its normal scheduling this week, with our weekly run coming up just before FNG. Check out our Discord to get information on the day for the planned route, whether it's a more sane route, or being subject to the DCS Pond Deathrun, and regardless of your ability level, you can join in, and add another 5K potentially to the tally!

Join the UWCS Run Club Strava

Exec responsible: Zach (Discord: doggy_woof) and Alfie (Discord: brentfordarmy2398)

🎮 Friday Night Gaming (7pm till LateTM) 🎮

🕖 Fri 10th Oct 7pm - Late 📍 CS0.03

They say sky's the limit, here the ceiling is the limit

The Friday night fun continues in unquestionably the best way to round off the week Raven is definitely not biased in writing this, along with free snacks and drinks.

Important: FNG is a sober event, please don't bring alcohol in, or you will be asked to leave.

Also Important: Make sure to tidy up after yourself before leaving, the department does a great kindness in letting us run this event, preferably we stay on their good side!

The Gaming Coordinators this year are: Raven (raven0034), Rob (spooky3142), Lyon (keyboardsky), Arda (mangowizard) and Sharvil (w.0lf) - come find us at any point if you need help, or even just to yap. We'll often be identifiable by our exec hoodies :)

We have a huge selection of fun activities for you to choose from, so come along for a great night :)

There are tons of options for consoles: Xbox, Wii, Nintendo Switches (including a Switch 2!), PS4 and more — all having a huge variety of games.

If you are more into Steam, we have that too, just ask us for our DCS account login! Not only that, but you can get full access to the department computers and enjoy a wide selection of free games (wow!)

It doesn't stop there folks. We also have a freaking Oculus VR headset, so you can immerse yourself in Metaverse games. Beat Saber is a popular choice, but we have tons of options!

Did you think that was it? We even have Jackbox along with other party games that will continue through the night.

Hope to see you there :3

🥄🥄🥄 Kenilworth Spoons Sit-in 🥄🥄🥄

🕗 Sat 11th Oct 8am - 12am 📍 The Dictum of Kenilworth, Kenilworth (unsurprisingly)

Alas, some spoons are cursed, but Spoons is universal. Spoons is love. Spoons is life. Spoons is the air we breathe.

That's right! There's a new Spoons, The Dictum of Kenilworth, that opened in July - and it wouldn't be right if we didn't pay it a visit as UWCS Raven went the day it opened and can confirm it's a very cool Spoons

🐈 🐈 🐈 Wildcards Cat Café 🐈 🐈 🐈

🕛 Sat 11th Oct 12pm - 2pm 📍 A Slice of Purrfection, Solihull

Featuring the rather aptly named Jigsaw, who sprawls themselves across jigsaws

Returning for a second Wildcards event of the week, we're making a return to A Slice Of Purrfection, a cat café in Solihull! Entry to the event is free, although this does not include the bus cost, and food & drink - but hey, DCS wants to pay you to go visit some cats, that's a win on any day of the week!

Phew! Very busy week ahead, but that completes this newsletter rabbit...

hole.

~ Raven :3