Polina Blinova, Grade 11
UWC Maastricht
Getting soaked from a showerhead sure does not exactly sound like the kind of thing you would envision your perfect birthday present as, however, it is actually quite a fun thing to do in reality! In any case, there’s no way for me to know for certain - being born in July, I am lucky, or rather unlucky enough to miss out on this wonderful tradition that we have at UWC Maastricht. I do not know if other UWCs celebrate birthdays in the same way, but I suppose that every college would have something of its own when it comes to that.
I have been told that showering people is a sort of relic of the old tradition of throwing people in the moat on the night of their birthday. Our campus is surrounded by water, and I would not be surprised if that was indeed the case; however, it is also understandable why doing so is forbidden now, and I myself would not want to be pushed into cold water in the middle of the night. So, I guess that for the moment, we’ll just have to be content with the opportunity to break the curfew for another ten minutes to shower someone in the residences.
Birthday showers usually start with cramming around thirty, if not more people in a single room, turning the lights off, and waiting for the person who is fortunate enough to be later drenched in water to show up. It always happens at 12 o’clock at night, and beforehand, someone always creates a group chat to notify as many people as possible about the celebration. Usually, we are not allowed to be in other buildings past midnight, but birthday nights are considered special occasions. They happen very often too, which is expected in a community of more than two-hundred people.
For me, these ‘birthday showers’ became an opportunity to meet and talk to people I’ve never previously interacted with much. After the actual ‘shower’ bit, everyone comes up to the birthday-person, gives them a hug, and says something nice. Sometimes we stay a little longer to eat cake, sometimes we head straight back to our rooms, and sometimes we go to yet another birthday shower that is happening on the same night. What remains the same is that it is always fun, and it is always the time when I feel closest to the community I have found myself in, and the people who surround me every single day.
We do not usually get ordinary birthday parties or celebrations in the sense that most of us are, after all, far from our homes and families. We do not get cards and gifts from our distant relatives or dinners with our parents. Instead what we get is staying up late in a room with people that you have known for little less than a year; we get to eat a cake that your roommates hastily bought before all the stores closed for the night; we get drenched in water (and soap, if you are lucky enough); and then we get to hug a long line of people, soaking them all at once.
I like this tradition, and I hope that I get to experience it for myself next year. I am fully aware that it is, indeed, a rather weird concept - getting someone showered for their birthday, but I never found myself questioning the reason behind it. It is not a big tradition that involves the whole student body; instead, it is a small and somewhat insignificant thing that we choose to carry on doing at UWCM. There should be many other examples similar to this, but I will leave you contemplating how weird but mostly fun UWC can be, and birthday showers are one of the reasons for that.
I have been told that showering people is a sort of relic of the old tradition of throwing people in the moat on the night of their birthday. Our campus is surrounded by water, and I would not be surprised if that was indeed the case; however, it is also understandable why doing so is forbidden now, and I myself would not want to be pushed into cold water in the middle of the night. So, I guess that for the moment, we’ll just have to be content with the opportunity to break the curfew for another ten minutes to shower someone in the residences.
Birthday showers usually start with cramming around thirty, if not more people in a single room, turning the lights off, and waiting for the person who is fortunate enough to be later drenched in water to show up. It always happens at 12 o’clock at night, and beforehand, someone always creates a group chat to notify as many people as possible about the celebration. Usually, we are not allowed to be in other buildings past midnight, but birthday nights are considered special occasions. They happen very often too, which is expected in a community of more than two-hundred people.
For me, these ‘birthday showers’ became an opportunity to meet and talk to people I’ve never previously interacted with much. After the actual ‘shower’ bit, everyone comes up to the birthday-person, gives them a hug, and says something nice. Sometimes we stay a little longer to eat cake, sometimes we head straight back to our rooms, and sometimes we go to yet another birthday shower that is happening on the same night. What remains the same is that it is always fun, and it is always the time when I feel closest to the community I have found myself in, and the people who surround me every single day.
We do not usually get ordinary birthday parties or celebrations in the sense that most of us are, after all, far from our homes and families. We do not get cards and gifts from our distant relatives or dinners with our parents. Instead what we get is staying up late in a room with people that you have known for little less than a year; we get to eat a cake that your roommates hastily bought before all the stores closed for the night; we get drenched in water (and soap, if you are lucky enough); and then we get to hug a long line of people, soaking them all at once.
I like this tradition, and I hope that I get to experience it for myself next year. I am fully aware that it is, indeed, a rather weird concept - getting someone showered for their birthday, but I never found myself questioning the reason behind it. It is not a big tradition that involves the whole student body; instead, it is a small and somewhat insignificant thing that we choose to carry on doing at UWCM. There should be many other examples similar to this, but I will leave you contemplating how weird but mostly fun UWC can be, and birthday showers are one of the reasons for that.
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