Facts and figures

Narrator: St Andrews students have a number of strange and wonderful traditions, including the academic family system.

Where older students adopt first years.

Nick, academic father: So, I would describe the academic family as an informal mentorship where third years adopt first years.

Hannah, academic child of Nick: The academic family has certainly enriched my social life, especially in first year just getting started. It was good to meet people and they always had a friendly face no matter where you went because this town is so small.

Narrator: The first few weeks of semester are often filled with academic families being created.

Whether you meet them through your academics, hobbies or social life, you never quite know how your academic family tree will grow.

Hannah: An academic family is different from a society or sports club because it's a very personal experience. It's a no commitment kind of thing unless you want it to be.

You make it what you want.

Naomi, academic child: I think it’s made it easier in first year to have the academic families and parents because you get to meet a lot of people that you wouldn’t ordinarily meet and it kind of bridges the gap between the older and younger years.

Narrator: The mentoring aspect of the academic families culminates in Raisin Weekend when children are entertained by their parents and are encouraged to play pranks and silly games.

Hannah: On Raisin Sunday, most people spend the morning with their ‘mothers’.

Lewis, academic child, brother to Naomi: We got a call at, I think it was 6.30am. Got told to go down to the beach.

Naomi: We found them assembled fully dressed in costume and then we went swimming in the sea to clean off. That was nice and refreshing.

Hannah: Before Raisin, I was so nervous. There is so much hype around the weekend, especially as a first year. If you haven’t been in St Andrews before for Raisin, you don’t know what to expect.

Nick: Coming up to Raisin Weekend, I think I was pretty nervous about not actually being able to make the weekend fun enough for my kids because, for me, certainly when I was a kid, it was such a great experience and I remember a lot of it just feeling amazed that this happens each year and it’s a tradition.

Narrator: Many parents spend the weeks before Raisin Weekend designing games for Raisin Sunday and costumes that children wear on Raisin Monday.

Yasmine, academic parent to Lewis and Naomi: For Raisin Monday we made costumes based on our favourite TV show. As a group we all constructed them together and spent quite a bit of time just staying up and having them as a kind of parent bonding and then we distributed them to our kids on Raisin Monday.

Narrator: The world-famous pinnacle of Raisin Weekend is Raisin Monday shaving foam fight.

Hannah: All the first years gather in the quad and your academic mother gives you a costume and you go in and you have these cans of shaving cream and you just lob it at each other.

Lewis: For the foam fight we all went down as a family, so our mum, who was the queen, we carried her on the throne.

Naomi: We marched through the streets of St Andrews with banners raised and flags flying so I think we made quite a scene.

Hannah: It was a really fun experience. It was over before I really knew it began. I guess I was just having so much fun. You’ll never get anything like that again.

Narrator: Academic families are a tradition which extends past the three main streets of St Andrews.

Nick: I’ve had some interesting cases when, down in London, I bumped into my academic great-great uncle at an event and, purely through chance, we worked out that we were related.

Sara, alumna, graduated 2012: When I look back on my time in St Andrews, I definitely include academic families, mainly because I still am in contact with them. One of my ‘daughters’ just had a baby, which is really crazy, so I’m kind of a grandmother.

Lewis: Your academic siblings, you don't know them before you meet with them as a family. So it’s really nice to meet them and then, from that, you get introduced to so many new people. It really opens a lot of doors. It’s a really good idea.

Hannah: To me the academic family has served as a real support system and a network of people I can always call on. I will definitely become an academic parent myself because I want to provide the same kind of support system that my parents gave to me. It’s another close friendship I look forward to having.

Foam fight! Every year hundreds of students gather to take part in the Raisin Monday foam fight.

The PH initials spelled out in the cobblestones outside St Salvator’s Quad mark the sport where Martyr Patrick Hamilton was burnt at the stake in 1528.

Beware!

According to tradition, any student stepping on the PH will be cursed to fail their exams.

Happily, the curse can be overturned by participating in the annual May Dip.

At sunrise on the first of May, students make their way to the East Sands where they run into the sea to cleanse themselves of academic sins ahead of their exams and to lift the curse.

At sunrise on the first of May, thousands of students make their way down to the East Sands and run into the North Sea.

This annual St Andrews tradition is intended to bring good luck in your exams and cleanse you of any academic sins.

Those not keen to run into the chilly North Sea are still welcome to come along and support their fellow students. Cafés open early on the day to provide warming drinks to the brave.