Student blogs

It’s intro week at KI, I’m chatting with new students at the KI pub but my eyes are hyper-focused on a student with a pair of crazy overalls.

An overall of 4 different colors, yellow, red, black and white. Their pants were plastered with different patches all over and on one leg was their name. Confused, I asked around why were they wearing them? What were they for? And more importantly, how do I get them?

Turns out it’s a big student thing here in Sweden, where each section of the student union will have an overall of its own color. And out of all the overalls I’ve seen up until now in Sweden, no overalls beat the overalls of the student union section called PrU. And those were the overalls that I stared at during intro week…. the overalls that I grew determined to earn.

What is PrU?

PrU is an abbreviation of ‘programutskottet’, which directly translates to ‘the program committee.’ They bring the KI student pub, parties, and sittings to life. They’re the students who are in charge of organizing these events and working through them…for free.

Crazy you might think- you do all that work for free?! But speaking from experience it really doesn’t feel like much work. With a great team of people, a pair of stylish overalls, combined with seeing the fun everyone around you is having – it makes the hard work pay off.

How do you get the overalls?

You have to work at a pub, a party, and at a sittning to officially earn the overalls and become a PrU member. Until then, you work as an AT, a trainee under the leadership of PrU members. And as an AT its tradition that you wear a nurse’s uniform. Check the photos below!

My first pub

Here’s me and my friend on our first pub shift wearing out AT uniforms. It happened to be a PrUxBUS pub meaning that the pub was hosted by both PrU and BUS (the biomedicine section with the green overalls.)

Having never worked at a bar before, everything from shaking drinks to pouring beer from the tap was a new experience. Since, by Swedish law we also always have to have food available, we also cook in the kitchen behind the bar. So, what we do get while we work is infinite access to the food we cook…which in my opinion is quite a great form of payment.

What else does PrU do?

They have a lot of internal events happening as well, one that I was able to be part of was “kaoz veckan” where PrU members meet up for pub crawls at different university pubs each day for a week straight. It was a very fun way to get know all the members better.

And that’s just one of the many events they have. I don’t even know yet what all they do since I’m not an official member yet.

But I’ll keep you posted, hopefully I’ll soon have a cool pair of overalls to show off.

Thank you Risa for supplying the colorful overall photos!