The day was 12 June 2023.

I walked into my first day of handover with wide eyes and the conviction to change the world. The weather was lovely, and that first month in office was all about bonding, learning the ropes of the role, and deciding on our top 10 issues for the year. Fast forward to Freshers’ Week, where the real madness began.

The FWEMs (Freshers’ Week Event Managers) were fantastic at their jobs (by the way, the new FWEMs have just started this week! Here comes FW countdown...), and they put together a fantastic set of events. The week ended in a bang, and we had a great time at both Toga night and cycle cinema. The first semester was a little odd for us, we had to balance the day-to-day of the SU and university meetings as well as the full force of term time and all the student events and queries that came with it. Snowball was a much deserved, fantastic way of finishing the semester and just celebrating with all our athletes a wonderful first few months in Bath.

As soon as I came back in January, I flew off to the Baltics and Finland to get to know all about their student representation systems. There’s a whole blog post on that and how cold I was during that week. There wasn’t much of a break, as nominations for SU officer roles were already open and that meant I got back to the full-time role as well as preparing for my campaign for re-election. This was an emotional time for your current officer team, as we all had to make hard decisions on whether to rerun. Realising that some of us would be leaving in June gave elections week a bittersweet taste.

This certainly didn’t mean campaign week wasn’t fun and exhausting and all that comes in between! I’m sure you saw my campaign team dressed as Santa, dancing reggaeton, and playing football on the Parade. I will never get tired of thanking them for their time. Nor will I get tired of thanking you all for your vote of confidence for another year of running the SU as we have this year. Came March it was time to start thinking about the transition into year two, what legacy we wanted to leave as a team this year, and what the Summer would look like.

April was hectic! Varsity (seventh year in a row whoop whoop), SU awards, Education Awards, and Blues Awards all happened in the spam of three weeks. I don’t know how we and our wardrobes survived this, but it was a fantastic month of just celebrating our students and all they have done. We were getting ready for a quieter May, but with exams and the stress that come with them, the officer team decided to do a final campaign as a team. We put together a food pantry to help you cope with exam stress, help you through the cost-of-living crisis, and simply do something nice for our students! This was great and a lot of fun, but it took a few days and trips to Lidl and Booker and a few angry glances from

people as we took ages to pay for all the food we brought back. I sincerely hope you enjoyed it, and it helped you through exams.

In just a couple of weeks, we’ll be starting handover to next year’s team. As I’m sure you know, David, Amber and I are staying. However, this doesn’t mean this isn’t a time of closure for us, as we say goodbye to our wonderful 2023-2024 team, and we close all the projects and things we did this year. It’s been a wonderful ride and a great learning experience, and I couldn’t finish this trip down memory lane without thanking everyone – students, officers, SU and university staff – for being a part of it and for being patient with our learning curve and mistakes throughout the year. A special and very heartfelt thank you to Hanna, Abbie, and Jura, who will be stepping down on Friday 23 June, for everything they’ve done this year. We will miss you more than I can express!

Before I start crying while typing, I’ll leave it here.

Hopefully, I’ll see some of you at Summer Ball! In the meantime, stay smiling and be kind to one another.

Much love,

Jiji x