One Big Blog

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I haven't blogged for a while so here is a quick splurge of information about what I've been doing these past few weeks.

9th November - Grad School Networking Lunch.

10th November - the 'Tell David' campaign outside the Aston Webb building. Would you pay £7000 a year for fees? And that's just the undergrads. Imagine what they'll charge postgrads, who don't even have a cap to begin with.

13th November - Networking Day at Nottingham Students' Union. This was particularly useful because I spent the day with Rebecca Lockhart, their full-time Postgraduate Students' Officer. She is lovely & American and she taught me lots of great stuff. We are looking to collaborate on future events, which ticks my manifesto box for regional networking. I was also given a tour of the Nottingham Grad School by the Head, Tessa Payne.

14th November - National Postgraduate Forum in York and the first of its kind. This was suprisingly useful and I learnt a huge amount about the issues that PGTs and PGRs deal with.

17th November - the PGMSA AGM. I spent a lot of time planning this and although we emailed all 8081 postgraduate students (thanks to the help of Postgraduate Student Outreach) only a handful of students showed up. Nevertheless, we elected seven out of the nine Committee positions (all international students) and I am very excited about working with them. Special thank you must go to Johnny Davis (VP Welfare) who helped out on the night.

19th November - I met with my Sabb mentor, the wonderful Brigid Jones, and she caught me up on several postgraduate issues that she is working on. In the afternoon, I sat on a Student Disciplinary Panel. This is nothing to do with postgrads but it is nevertheless part of my Officer role. In the evening was Guild Council and mine & Emma's Honey Pot motion was successful. Guild Council now believes that postgrads should be able to apply for Honey Pot funding so myself and Emma Packham (VP Student Activities & Development) need to start lobbying.

21st November - Johnny Davis (VP Welfare) hosted a Student Parents Forum at the Guild. I went along knowing that most of the student parents would be mature students and I spoke to them about the challenges that face student parents. Seven mums, one Dad and nine children attended. Due to positive feedback, a second Forum will take place in two weeks.

As you can see, busy times. Thank you for reading.
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