Meet super fresher John who is attending all of your subject’s lectures for fun

It’s the moment when someone you don’t recognise strolls into your lecture, only to leave five minutes later when they’ve realised they don’t belong there.

But for Warwick’s very own super-fresher John has been attending lectures of various subjects because he wants to.

First year Maths and Physics student John Bamping has made it his mission over the past few weeks to attend lectures for as many different subjects as possible. So far he’s sat through lectures for Politics, English, History, a German film screening and Biology. That’s on top of his weekly dose of Maths and Physics.

It all started when he offered to attend a lecture for a friend who was too ill to make it. Though finding it a struggle to get up for a 9am that wasn’t useful to him at all, he really enjoyed it and even took notes.

He said: “Its harder to take notes for humanities than it is for sciences.”

His favourite so far has been a politics lecture on imperialism. He attributes this to “always having an interest in history” and although he didn’t pick up much new knowledge, he enjoyed learning from an expert in the field rather than a textbook.

Has he noticed differences in the types of students that take each subject?

“Oh loads” he replied. Bodacious Bamping was struck that the majority of humanities students use laptops, a trend he hasn’t noticed in his home department, where students embrace the 1970s with pen and paper.

He still loves maths and physics though, and his experiences haven’t inspired him to swap degree courses.

He said: “English literature is really relevant to the modern world. Even if you’re studying Homer you can relate it to the modern world. The maths and physics we’re studying at the moment is mostly 19th century stuff.”

Does he intend to keep going to random lectures that have nothing to do with his course? Most certainly. John is planning to keep going to lectures that he can understand without doing prior reading, making them more understandable.