Hi everyone. Firstly, sorry that my blog isn’t as pretty as everyone else’s, I have been super busy and didn’t have time to make it fancy. For the first blog of the year, I'm going to take you through month by month up to now. 

July 

So, this is where it all begun, on 3rd July we all started as student leaders and got straight to work learning our departments and meeting staff across the SU and university. We spent 3 days looking at thousands of pieces of data in order to understand what students care about in order to build our big plan for the year which is guiding our work as leaders on behalf of all students. I met with university council for the first time which for those who don’t know what university council is, it is the trustee board of the university that has ultimate control on the university and its governance. I also took a little bit of time off in order to attend my graduation and spend time with my family to celebrate. 

August 

In August the Vice Chancellor announced he would be retiring at the end of the academic year, and I began meetings discussing how we can get students involved in the important decision-making process and ensure that the right candidate is hired to lead the university. We then presented our Big Plan to senior university staff in both Colchester and Southend which won a lot of support, and we are using this support to continue to deliver on our promises. We then spent 3 days at the Southern Union conference which is where 20 SU’s across the south of England come together to discuss how we can improve and develop for students’ benefit. Finally, we met with the Union of Jewish Students to complete antisemitism training to ensure we are inclusive of everyone in our SU family. 

September 

September was a busy month with most of my work consisting of helping prep for freshers to ensure all students felt welcome when they returned to any of our campuses. We then had neurodiversity training to help us in understanding how we can better support indviduals and make them feel welcome and supported. We had a dinner with the vice chancellor where we discussed many student issues and continued to challenge him to go further for students to ensure everyone's voice is heard and ideas are delivered. I also spent a day down at Loughton campus with our amazing E15 president Nina who showed me around and explained some of the specific circumstances which makes Loughton campus like no other to study at. 

Freshers 

There is only one word I can use to sum up last week, Bonkers. On Monday I co-hosted Su taste off with Qurat and Breeze, on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I DJed (controlled the Spotify) for Squad games, Binglow and a bar event as well as helping out at multiple Sub nights. All in all, it was amazing to get to be a part of and I got to meet so many of you with your amazing (and sometimes crazy) ideas for the year ahead. Finally on Monday this week we welcomed the new Chancellor Sarah Perry to the SU who met with the student leaders to understand what we are doing for students, painted pottery down at SU makes, filmed an interview with rebel media and hosted a university 60 years frisbee golf tournament. 

Hopefully from this you can see just how busy I have been since I've started but any questions, please do email me.