Posted on Mon 17 Sep 2018 at 12:56 by
Jiani Zhou On a cold and rainy day (summer, where are you?), sitting in my office, sipping a chai latte, I am writing my first blog.
It has been over two months since I started my job as your SU Postgraduate Officer. This is a brand new journey for me and I have genuinely enjoyed every moment of it.
I have been attending a lot of University and Union meetings and finding my way as an SU Officer. I constantly remind myself that I am representing the postgraduate community here at Bath, which has brought me more confidence and courage to speak out at meetings, and reach out to the senior management. As you may already be aware, we are getting a new Vice-Chancellor, Professor Ian White. I was fortunate enough to be involved in the student session element of the Vice-Chancellor recruitment process and am happy about this new appointment – a new chapter has begun at the University.
In the grand scheme of things, one thing I have found is that it’s the seemingly small incidents that make me happy and provide me with a sense of achievement. For instance, during my first week, I had a meeting with the Careers Service about their quick query sessions and now we have a much better appointment system. On another occasion I accompanied a student to an academic appeal hearing, and the student received a satisfactory result and thanked me for the light chat and company – instances like these are just precious.
Do you also want to be part of the change?
There are a lot of things you can do to make a change through the Students’ Union. You could stand to become an Academic Representative or a Faculty Representative and have your voice heard in a more formal setting (e.g. Staff-Student Liaison Committees). Or, if you are keen to do something together with and for postgraduates, you are more than welcome to nominate yourself at the Postgraduate Association (PGA) Executive Committee. Both the Academic Rep and PGA Elections take place in October.
If you’ve reached this far – thanks for the patience!
I have mentioned above about our PGA. As a postgraduate, you are automatically a member of the PGA and I hope to see as many of you as possible in our future events.
For now, I would like to remind you about our FWabulous Freshers’ Week 2018 (September 24 – 30)! Apart from the main events, there is a special programme for all postgraduates with events taking place from Monday to Saturday. See you all there – be there, or be square!
(In other news, I submitted my dissertation for my Masters!)
Best wishes,
Jiani ZHOU
Your SU Postgraduate Officer