Hello lovely people! When meeting early starters, I often get asked ‘so, what is your job anyway? what do you do?’ and beyond the ‘oh gosh how do I even begin to start to explain? I basically get to have a go at the University for you’, I thought showing you a week in the life may be useful to let you see what I get up to in a week! This massively varies, but with Fresher’s coming up, I thought it might be really neat to also show you what it is like as we begin to prepare for everyone to come back.
Monday
Today was simply meeting after meeting – we spent the morning in talks about the great beast that is curriculum transformation, midday and early afternoon with senior tutors where we learnt all about what pastoral support they have access to so they can help you in turn, and the afternoon in Education Board. Education Board is exactly what it sounds like – heaps of policy surrounding your academic experience under the keen eye of the PVC for Education, Julian (watch out for him, he will pop along later too !). We stay past home time to help wrap up fresher's bags, and with about four thousand to make up, its a good thing we did !
Tuesday
Tuesday morning kicked off with a 9am hour long meeting on policy – including around IMCs, something that was a key part of my manifesto ! Following this, I had a catch-up with Charlie, who is the head of the Voice team here in the SU, where we talked about getting together a paper for Education Board on disability action plans, something our disabled student group is really keen on tackling this year. Following this, I got to meet with the education manager for HSS, and we talked all about how to make the work of academic reps more accessible for everyone in the cohort – who, after all, wants to read through pages and pages of notes? We finished up the day by going through papers for the Board of Trustees – as officers, we act as trustees of the SU, but we also have student trustees, and external trustees including former officers (Hi Jordan!). Everything BIG the SU wants to do must pass through this meeting first, as it is the responsibility of the trustees to make sure we aren’t going awry.
Wednesday
This is a good example of a weird mixed day. In the morning, we had meetings about the marking and assessment boycott, and upcoming action within the SU, followed immediately by helping the FWEMs (freshers week event managers) out with training captains, and then straight onto making a pilot video for Julian – which ended up with him being pecked by a taxidermy crow (Edgar Allan Crow to his friends) while stuck in the SU bath tub. The day ended with seeing Ed again, this time with community officer Hanna – in this meeting we got to talk about late arrivals, sole finalists, and even a disability ally scheme.
Thursday
This is it – the big bad board of trustees. Jimena chairs the meeting, and did a stunning job of keeping it all on time, so we could sneak in a lunch break seeing that for the past week we have a record of 8 minutes to eat. In the afternoon, I had a wellbeing session to check all is well (dear reader, I am terrified of the 19 days straight working that is fresher’s week), and also got to start planning winter graduations!
Friday
Friday starts with me bumping into the keen early movers (or perhaps those who just live nearby), the very first of which is someone living in the exact same bedroom as I did in first year. You cannot get more cool than that. This is also the day where I switched between campus and city half-way through, and, sitting in a place of the library where you can talk, have an oddly timed meeting about learning spaces – my earphones don’t connect and ‘Hi Amber’ rings out across the stacks. I wish I could say I played it cool, but I instead have to spend the next half-hour clinging to my phone like a call to a long-distance aunt who doesn’t understand how bad the signal is. This embarrassment is soothed, however, by seeing the captains outside Green Park – I have never seen such a bunch of lovely bubbly people, nor have I seen so many confused drivers.
Saturday
Saturday is where Arrivals Weekend really kicks off – campus is thriving, URB is playing loud and proud, free high-fives are handed out on the parade. This day mostly goes past in a blur of directions to the library, University Life talks, and ushering people towards the wristbands.
Sunday
If you have gotten this far, well done. Both as someone also working Fresher’s Week, but also simply as a reader. As no-one is set to move in on campus anymore, it all begins to morph into a weird kind of calm. Campus is once again buzzing, buses are packed, and the Plug and Tub are welcoming students with open arms for all kinds of mixers. Whilst I spend the morning doing University Life talks, in which I adore hyping up the other officers, getting to hype up incoming fellow Psychology students with a pumpkin spice latte (I have a taxidermy crow, of course I give in to all autumn branded goodness) and spending a moment of calm with the captains in the FWoffice (the control room of this whole operation), is a charm that ends the week perfectly.
Well ! If that doesn't work well as a time capsule, I'm not sure what will !
TTYL
Amber x