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Welcome Week 2026: 'I was exactly in their place' - the student helping students settle in

21 Sep 2026

The nerves and excitement new students bring to Welcome Week, from one of the student staff helping them settle in, who was in their position three years ago.

Samhita Mukherjee

Some of the people helping new students settle in this Welcome Week were new students themselves not long ago.

Samhita Mukherjee arrived in Manchester as an international student in 2023. Now, as a member of the Library's student team, she works alongside Library colleagues to support the students following in her footsteps, from updating the workshops they'll attend to answering their questions in person this week.

"Every time I see a new student or talk to a new student and they have some questions that I had, I go back to when I was a first-year student," she said. "I try to relate it with them, and make them understand that I was exactly in their place. I really enjoy doing that, meeting new people and helping them."

That first-hand experience is something student staff bring to the University's welcome that's hard to find anywhere else. What Samhita hears from new students this week is also worth knowing for any colleague who teaches, supports or simply meets them in their first few weeks.

What new students are worrying about

"Making friends is something I think everyone worries about," she said. "And other than that, obviously, whether they've chosen the right course, whether they're going to do well. But there's social life and personal lives as well, because it's a huge change."

For colleagues meeting new students in these first weeks, those worries often sit behind the questions they ask. Samhita felt them too.

"I came to Manchester a week before freshers' week, moved into my halls and started making friends," she said. "I was really nervous and excited. I think it's the first time I started living independently, away from family, living life on my terms. I was just excited to be an adult."

A summer of getting ready

The student team's work started long before students arrived. Over the summer, they checked and updated the academic and Welcome Week workshops they run, including Get Started, and brought them in line with the new AI in Teaching and Learning policy and Copilot.

"We've done a lot of techie stuff during the summer for the new students," she said, "so they have well-organised tech and they don't have issues with it."

The team also put together a pre-arrival resource, shared posts over the summer to welcome students before they arrived, and worked with Special Collections to choose items for this year's display in the Library's exhibition spaces.

"We tried to make it relevant to student life in 2026," she said, "but they see it through the lens of history as well."

This week, that preparation is paying off, with the team running workshops and visiting departments to meet new students face to face.

"Our proper work starts around Welcome Week itself, when the students all come in," she said. "But before that, it's a lot of preparation work."

"The entire journey"

For Samhita, this week is only the start of what new students will go through at Manchester, and every colleague they meet along the way is part of it.

"Freshers' week is quite a significant time," she said. "But I just want to put it out there that freshers' week is not the most important time, because the entire journey is. I think it makes it what university is."

Welcome Week 2026